I love soups. I never used to like soups. People always put celery in soups, and celery is one of those flavors that just makes me cringe. I don't really like stews either. You know what? I like broth. That's really it. I like broth. 

That being said, I had some amazing french onion soup at a restaurant a couple weeks ago and I couldn't get the broth out of my head. It reminded me of some of my favorite beef broth... so I had to try to make it myself. 

I found this recipe on the le creme de la crumb site which has given me oodles of inspiration for slow cooker food. I am not terribly fond of recipes that require me to do extra work before I put it in the slow cooker, but I know what happens when you put raw onions in soup... something just doesn't work. So, I did this (ingredients and directions are from the la creme de la crumb site)...

Ingredients:

• 4 yellow onions, skins removed and thinly sliced into rings
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 8 cups beef broth
• 1 bay leaf
• 6 slices crusty french bread
• 8-12 slices of gruyere or swiss cheese

Directions:

1. Add butter and onion rings to the largest pan/skillet you have and saute over medium-high heat for about 10 minutes or until onions are translucent and start to brown. Cover and cook about 5 minutes longer to let them caramelize a little more.
2. Transfer onions to slow cooker. Add garlic, broth, and bay leaf. Cover and cook on high 3-4 hours or on low 6-8 hours (or up to 10).
3. About 20-30 minutes before serving, preheat oven to 420 degrees. Place slices of bread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place in preheated oven for about 5 minutes, then flip the bread slices over and return to oven for another 5 minutes or so until bread is dried and crunchy. Set aside.
4. Place oven-safe bowls on the baking sheet. Fill each with soup from the slow cooker. Place 2 slices of swiss cheese (overlapping) on top of the soup so the edges are hanging over the sides of the bowls. Bake about 10 minutes until cheese is melty. Serve with crusty bread and garnish with parsley if desired.

Notes: 
I don't follow directions well. I didn't use the bay leaf (I'm not terribly fond of bay). I used way too much broth because I wanted to have enough liquid in the crock pot. 

Okay... so, I'm pretty sure the reason this is supposed to go into a crock pot is because the broth needs to heat, and it needs to fuse with the onions and become delicious to the extreme. The problem is that the broth I used is made at boiling temperature, so the slow cooker wasn't really necessary at all. If I had my own homemade broth, the slow cooker would have been amazing. 

The onions took forever to caramelize and caused some awesome burn marks on the side of my stainless steel pan. I should have used my cast iron. 


Review:
​The recipe was easy to follow, and the ingredients were easy to find. It is honestly just broth, bread, onions, and cheese. It's really hard to mess up, and it's really hard to not love it. Find a broth that you love and use that. 

I am pretty sure the soup lasted about 5 seconds. I inhaled it. I might be an animal. It was really good, but it was also pretty standard. 

Total Score:
4

I posted this link on facebook and I got a lot of positive feedback. It sounded so intriguing, that I had to give it a go. 

Promises, promises. 

I really like garlic, and I really like ginger. So far, I love this recipe. I tried it out yesterday. I probably should have done it another day. TC and I had spent all day working in the yard, and I was exhausted by the time I realized that this was going to take a couple hours to make. I was plumb tuckered by the end of all this, and a nice hot cup of soup sounded so good. 

Ingredients:
26 cloves Garlic, raw and unpeeled
2 tbsp Butter or Olive Oil for sauteing 
1/2 tsp Cayenne Powder
1/2 c. Fresh Ginger
2 1/4 c. Onion, Chopped or Sliced
1 1/2 tsp Fresh Thyme
26 cloves Garlic, raw and peeled
1/2 c. Coconut Milk
3 1/2 c. Vegetable Broth

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350°F
• Toss unpeeled garlic in olive oil and salt and wrap in tinfoil. Place in baking dish and roast for about 35 minutes (or until garlic is browned and tender)
• While waiting for the garlic to bake, I would spend that time peeling the rest of the garlic and grating the ginger.
• When the roasted garlic is done, take it out of the oven and wait for it to cool. When it has cooled, squeeze the garlic out of it's shells. 
• Melt butter, or use olive oil, to saute the onions, ginger, thyme, and cayenne pepper
• When the onions are fully sauteed, add the garlic... all of it. Cook for 3 minutes. 
• Add broth, cover, and simmer until the raw garlic is tender (about 20 minutes)
• In batches, puree the soup in a blender or food processor (be aware to use something that can handle the heat)
• Return the soup to the saucepan and add coconut milk. 
• Simmer. 
• Season to taste.

Notes:
I got the recipe from Real Farmacy
I doubled the recipe so I could freeze some for later when one of us gets sick. 

The ginger is stringy. I don't know if it's just my blender, but even after I blended it all together, I found little stringy bits as we were eating it. 

This, surprisingly, didn't taste too garlicky. 

When TC wants soup, he wants stew. When I want soup, I want broth. So, this wasn't exactly his type of soup. 

Review:
All in all, this took a couple hours to make. If you have the time (or the extra hands to help you peel garlic), I say go for it!

As a brothy soup, I really loved it. It also would be good with potatoes or tofu. I give it a 4.5 

As a stew, TC found it completely lacking. Without chunky delicious bits, TC gave it a 3. Sad day.

Assuming you use olive oil instead of butter, this recipe is totally vegan, gluten free, paleo, and vegetarian. 

Total Score:
4

I had some leftover french fries from Ruggles (if you can't have certain foods like dairy, wheat, meat, etc, and you're in Houston, check this place out. They have three locations.)  So, I poured the soup over the fries. It was quite tasty!

This is a strange title. I'm not really sure what else to call it. When I first read that that this recipe is for a spinach muffin, I scoffed. One of my friends had posted the link on Facebook and she said it was delicious. So, I figured, sure, why not?

Ingredients:
1 c. All Purpose Flour
1 c. Whole Wheat Flour
3/4 c. Sugar
2 tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp Baking Soda
1½ tsp Cinnamon
½ tsp Salt
¼ c. Canola Oil
¾ c. Milk
6 oz Fresh Baby Spinach
½ cup Mashed Banana (from about 2 bananas)
2 tsp Vanilla

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 425°F
• Whisk all the dry ingredients together. 
• Put the spinach, milk, vanilla, bananas and oil into a blender and puree
• Pour spinach mix into the dry ingredients and fold until completely mixed. 
• On a greased baking sheet, put 6 globs of batter. (I know "glob" isn't a precise unit of measurement but the pictures will give you a better idea. 
• Bake for 6-8 minutes, until the edges and top are slightly browned. 

Notes:
The original recipe is from The Green Forks

The original recipe calls for Canola Oil. I used coconut oil, which you may know has a low melting point. Basically if the liquid coconut oil touches something cold, it turns back into a solid. So, I had to heat up the milk and spinach before I mixed the oil in, but it still didn't mix fully. 

The original recipe also calls for milk. I used coconut milk. 

So, instead of using the all purpose flour and the wheat flour, I used the gluten free flour blend that I had made for the cornbread (1 c. of that), and one cup of almond flour. I have an issue with almond flour. Mostly my issue is in the serving size. A handful of almonds is a serving. So, about 1/4 c. of almond flour is a serving. That's why I didn't use 2 cups of almond flour. It would have been almost a serving per muffin top. If I had also used almond milk, it would have been so much almond! I used coconut milk and almond flour to balance it out. 

The original recipe also had me using an ungreased baking sheet. That didn't work for me, so I used a greased pan for the second go. 

I also added a dash of lemon. Didn't hurt anything, but I don't know that it helped. 

Review:
This tastes amazing and you can totally eat it raw, and it is vegan! Delicious! TC says, "They're green and sweet!" and he gives them a 4. I would also give them a 4 and I look forward to making them without the xanthan gum next time... it will be less gummy. :)

Total Score:
4

This was a strange title. I want to call it an egg bake, but saying "Chorizo and Egg Egg Bake" sounds very strange. Either way, It is what it is. It's chorizo (a spicy pork sausage type thing) and eggs. Exciting, eh?

I've been wanting to make a large egg bake for a week of breakfasts, but we have a tendency to eat this at any meal, so I'm not going to call it a breakfast food. 

Ingredients:
12 Eggs, Whisked
1 lb. Chorizo, Cooked
1-2 Potatoes, Grated
1/2 Onion, Diced
1/2 c. Mozzarella, Shredded
Garlic Powder
Salt
Pepper
(any other seasonings you think would complement this bake)

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 375°F. 
• Cook your chorizo*
• Chop onion and grate potato while chorizo is cooking. 
• Beat the eggs in a large bowl (you're going to be adding everything to this bowl, so make sure it can accomodate potatoes, onion, and cheese)
• Add potatoes, onion and cheese to egg bowl. 
• Pour half the egg mix into a small casserole (7x11 or 9x9)
• Add the chorizo on top of the egg mix
• Pour the rest of the egg mix over the chorizo
• Bake for 22-25 minutes (until eggs aren't runny, you may have to cut it open to check on the middles)
• Let sit for 10 minutes

This is one of my all time favorite shows. As a Minnesotan, I love Rose. The clip is 5 minutes long, but you only have to watch 2 minutes. I strongly recommend watching the whole thing because the Golden Girls are hilarious. So, what is happening in this scene: Rose is baking something and needed egg whites. She didn't want to throw away the yolks, so she put them in a little bag on the counter. Blanche has just written the world's greatest romance novel...

Notes:
I'm pretty sure I watched that video 5 times. I love the Golden Girls. 

I originally got this recipe from PaleOMG (a paleo cooking blog).

*When cooking chorizo, it helps to cook it at a higher temperature (on our stove, that would be a 7). If you do so, turn the fan on because it will burn your eyes with the spices. Also, I start it at a high temperature and then turn it down to a medium-low temperature for the duration of cooking. 

I used a 4 cup measuring cup for the eggs, potatoes, onion, and cheese and it fit. 

Alternatively, you can mix the chorizo in with the egg and potatoes. I didn't use a big enough bowl, so I did it lasagna style. 

I used two tubes of chorizo, which was a little more than a pound. I would definitely use less chorizo next time. It's spicy. Not too spicy for me, but too spicy for a lot of folks. 

We couldn't find soyrizo, but we really wanted to do our recipe with it because it is delicious. 

Review:
It was a tad spicy for my taste, but I think it turned out great! I definitely want to do it again and add other things like spinach. TC says, "I like it. It's spicy! It would be good on tortillas!" He gives it a 4 because we don't have tortillas (there is this place near where we live that makes the most amazing flour tortillas... which I can't have.). I give it a 3.5 because it needs a little more diversity of ingredients. Next time, I will add red peppers and spinach and use less chorizo. As for the mess factor, the potatoes are the only really messy part. The chorizo pan might be difficult to clean, but I use cast iron, so I just wipe out my pan and the next thing I cook (cornbread) will have a little chorizo taste to it. 

Total Score:
4

Update 02/14/2014:
We tried this again with soyrizo instead of chorizo. I don't recommend it. It's very bland. 

I love sweet potatoes. I am from northern Minnesota, and we only had sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving. They were always covered in marshmallows. My sister and I would do a trade. I would give her the marshmallows, and she would give me the yams. I would salt my candied yams, but I had to do it in secret otherwise people would make comments about it. I don't know why sweet potatoes aren't more popular in the north. 

Ingredients:
1 lb. Sweet Potatoes (boiled and skinned)
1/2 c. Sour Cream
1 Egg Yolk
1/2 tsp salt 
1/4 tsp Mace

Directions:

• Beat all ingredients until the mix is smooth. 
• Pour mix into a buttered dish (a small casserole or so).
• Bake at 350°F for 30min uncovered. 

Notes: 
A lot of people like marshmallows baked on top of their candied yams. I also like it, but I tried finding a healthier option, so I made coconut whipped cream to go on top of it when it was ready to be served. The problem I had was that I added the sweetener too soon and it caused the liquid and the cream to separate further, which does not make for good whipping cream. The syrupy liquid and the sweet cream made an excellent topping for the yams... but the whip would have tasted good as well. 

Also, the ingredients call for mace. If you don't have mace, that's fine, you can use cinnamon or something like that. I rather like having it around. I like the taste of it, but it's definitely not something you want to overdo. 

Review:
I used the wrong sized casserole and basically had to shove the mix up into the corners of the pan. In the end, I only used half the pan, but since the yams were already cooked, it just needed to all be heated together. So, future reference, use a smaller pan next time. 

The taste was delicious, and I really liked with the failed coconut whip topping. I like my candied yams to be a bit more liquidy than this was. In other words, these were too dry for me. That's probably why I liked the failed coconut whipped topping on mine. Because of that, I will give it a 4. TC is not fond of sweet potatoes, so I couldn't get him to eat enough for a rating. 

Final Score:
4