With the days getting cooler and the nights downright chilly there’s nothing like a nice hot bowl of hearty soup to warm both body and spirit. Add a little extra kick to that soup and it tingles the tongue as well. If you don’t mind taking a bite of something that’s going to bite back a bit, this soup is for you.

This was just a quick toss together for lunch yesterday, but it made enough that my wife had it for dinner too, as did I. (She’d heartlessly stolen eaten all the kielbasa by then, so I added some potatoes and simmered for 20 minutes…) It takes about 30 minutes start to finish, and can be made with pretty much anything. The flavors were good, the spiciness was wonderful. I just wish I’d had some good crusty bread to go with it, that would have been divine.

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Chicken pot pie is one of those simple, wholesome foods that I remember from my childhood. Like may of my generation, I thought all pot pies came in boxes that were plucked ripe off the vine in the valley of the jovial chartreuse midget. (Or something like that.) They were heated, served and devoured, usually two or three to a person and with gusto on cold, damp San Francisco Bay Area weekends when the fog rolled in over the vineyards and the wind touched little cheeks with fingers of ice.

They were heaven. We didn’t care that they came from a package, just that it meant laughter and a warm belly after venturing out in the chill. (Today the temperatures we called cold in the Sonoma valley seem kind of foolish, but as children that had never known a truly cold climate, 30 degrees was freezing!) My mother, my sister and I would stand in the kitchen, soaking up the warmth of the oven and a cup of cocoa (coffee in my mother’s case), just waiting for the golden brown treasures to be done. We’d all sit together and talk about whatever was on our respective minds at the time and share that most precious of bonds, Family.

I call these the cheater’s version of a chicken pot pie simply because the only real effort in making them was reheating some leftovers and finding a suitable pastry to cover a few of my large ramekins, but I think that my mother would have agreed that they were some of the best we’d ever eaten, if she could be her to share them with my family and I today.

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With fall finally showing its colors here in Texas the desire for slow cooked comfort foods moves more to the front of my mind. Even though I happily braise foods all year long, it’s a lot easier to do so when there is no need to turn the A.C. down to ridiculous levels to keep the house cool, and the aroma of long simmering herbs warms the heart when stepping in from a brisk evening.

This weekend brought the first sniffles of the season as well, so a hearty chicken stew just seemed to be the perfect choice for house full of slightly-under-the-weather adults and one teething toddler. (He didn’t like the stew, but hey, I tried) Warm, rich and hearty from beginning to end, with leftovers enough for the next few days, at least for a party of two. For a larger family this will easily make a full meal.

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I’ve been blaming a lot of other food bloggers for my entries here lately, and today seems to be more of the same. This time it was Katerina of Daily Unadventures in Cooking who decided my fate for me. I was just taking my daily dose of food blogs when I ran across her recipe for Acorn Squash with Toasted Seeds, and I knew I had to make it, or something like it.

My first attempt was a complete disaster. Nothing I had read prepared me for the fact that acorn squash seems to amplify salt to a magnitude heretofore unknown by man. I’d used chicken stock as the liquid, and even though I use the low sodium variety, I figure that played a part in the over salinization. The resulting dish would have tasted great, if I’d been able to get past the saltiness of it, but I couldn’t. It was drain fodder, nothing more.

In the end, I looked over Katerina’s recipe again and decided I’d like to up the flavor by adding roasted garlic, cut out the chicken stock altogether and loose the toasted seeds, since my dental work didn’t find them to be all that much fun.

The resulting dish is thick, satisfying and oh-so delicious. I can honestly say that this is my own creation, since I used the original recipe only as a guideline for cooking the squash, which is of a variety I’m unused to working with. This has been an egregious oversight on my part, and I’ll not be failing to give the little forlorn acorn squash his due from now on. I crafted at least three new uses for it when I tasted this soup, and I can’t wait to see if they stand up as well as I think they will.

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Fall is just about upon us. Cooler weather has settled in over much of the country. Most of my fellow food bloggers have broken out recipes for braised, slow cooked foods that highlight the best ingredients that fall, or at least late Autumn, has to offer in their area. Looking over their recipes has me dreaming of cool afternoons and a dutch oven simmering over low heat, waiting to offer up its succulent slow cooked contents for our family, and my son’s first taste of braised pork roast or slow roasted chicken.

Here in the great state of Texas, we’re still dealing with 90 degree days, but the mornings are foreshadowing cooler days to come. The cravings for more winter-esque foods are becoming increasingly pronounced as the days get shorter, and yesterday I caved in to them.

Tomato soup paired with a grilled cheese sandwich is not only the perfect cool weather lunch, though the combination has definitely been one of the most common in my household for years. The two together are also a quintessential American comfort food meal of nearly epic proportions, so I doubt too many people will find it surprising that I chose this combination for my first officially “fall” dish.

I won’t go into the sandwich in this entry, as it was a simple Muenster sandwich browned in olive oil. The star of the show is the soup and it is what deserves our attention here. Thick, rich and so very satisfying that it could almost be called a tomato stew, and could definitely be used as a sauce, it’s a far cry from anything you’ve had out of a can, and more than worth the trouble to make, I assure you.

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Ever since I made my version of Kielbasa Stew from the recipe at La Mia Cucina, I’ve been dying to try out a version that used different types of sausage. Knowing that, I suppose it was somewhat advantageous that a tummy bug caught hold of me earlier this week, and that a good soup was the only thing on my mind. It was also fortunate that even though it was the day before payday, I had everything I needed in the larder to whip up a soup.

You keep calling it a soup. I thought the recipe was for sausage stew?

OK, you got me. It is a stew, but only in light of the absolutely outrageous amount of meat and chunky veggies it contains, and the fact that they were stewed. Usually I would have made a roux before adding the stock, but as I said, I was having tummy trouble, so I avoided thickening the broth at all.

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It’s been said for a very long time that chicken soup is good for a cold. It’s been proven that the vapors help with congestion, but I still think it’s the comfort factor that makes us feel so much better when we’re under the weather.

Mrs. seat of her Pants was down with a bug over the weekend and the only thing she could tolerate was soups and broths. In true style, she fussed at me that I didn’t need to go out of my way to make her anything “special” and that she would be quite happy with the soup in the little red box.

Powdered soup… For my sick wife… I don’t think so. Read more…

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Sometimes the best meals you’ll ever have are those that warm your heart as well as your stomach. Long, slow cooked meals as infused with love as they are with ingredients. The kind of meal that you make with family all standing around the kitchen adding their own touches. These are the meals that create memories you will savor far longer than the food itself.

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Sometimes you just want a good, warm, satisfying meal. That’s what was on my mind today when hunger pangs hit me. I wanted something that would keep me going until dinner. But what do you make for yourself when you’re by yourself and you’ve got a fussy four-month old who sounds as if he may start wailing at any moment?

You make ramen! Well, you make kicked-up ramen. Read more…

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The weather here in Texas has been on the cold side for the past few days. Temperatures in the Twenties with ice and freezing rain. It’s horrible weather to go and do anything in, but perfect weather for a good stew in front of a roaring fire.

I had originally planned to make either a beef stew or a pork stew with some leftover pork roast I had in the fridge, but realized that neither my beef or pork larder was large enough for a stew that would produce leftovers. I did have a ton of sausage though, so off I went to search the food blogs for a sausage stew recipe.

The inspiration for this stew was found at La Mia Cucina. The original post and recipe can be found here, and I want to thank Lis for posting. Read more…

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