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Recipe of the Week: Chicken Tortilla Soup

March 8, 2009 27 Comments


This week I’m sharing my recipe for chicken tortilla soup. I had never tried this soup until a couple of months ago. A lot of bloggers had posted their own recipes for the soup, and I finally decided to find one of my own and try it out.

Of course, I decided to try the easiest version I could find, and then I couldn’t make it without making a few changes first. Below you’ll find my edited version of the recipe, followed by the original, along with my tips and suggestions.

My Recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup

Ingredients:

2 cans black beans (15 oz)
2 cans whole kernel corn (15-15.25 oz) (drained)
2 cans of chicken breast (10 oz, drained) (or 2-3 boneless chicken breast, cooked/chopped)
1/2 cup chicken broth (or more if you prefer)
3 tsp of chili powder

Mix all ingredients together and heat to a rolling boil. Simmer on low till heated through.

Serve with chips, shredded cheese, and sour cream.


The Original Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cans of diced tomatoes with green chile peppers (10 oz)
2 cans black beans (15 oz)
2 cans whole kernel corn (15 oz) (drained)
2 cans of chicken breast (10 oz, drained)
2 cans of chicken broth

Mix all ingredients together and heat to a rolling boil. Simmer on low till heated through.

Reasons for my Changes:
-I left out the tomatoes because I don’t care much for tomatoes, and my husband sometimes has allergic reactions to the tomatoes.
-The Broth. I recommend no more than 1 cup with my version of the recipe. (But keep in mind that my version is thick and less soup-y). The original recipe called for 2 cans of chicken broth, and I suppose if you include the tomatoes in the recipe, you would need more broth. Just use your best judgement.
-Also, the original recipe did NOT include the chili powder. I just added this to give it a little more flavor.


Tips & Suggestions:



-This is a great meal to make when you’re in a hurry. In fact, I like to keep canned chicken on hand just so I can put it quick recipes like this.
-This is also a great way to use up your leftover chicken.
-And because this is so easy to make, it’s a good recipe to double and freeze for later, and it’s also a great recipe to make for company.


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Please visit the following sites for more great recipes & other ideas:
Tempt My Tummy Tuesday is hosted by Blessed With Grace.
Homemaker Mondays is hosted by 11th Heaven’s Homemade Haven.
Making A Happy Home Monday is hosted by As For Me and My House….
Kitchen Tip Tuesdays is hosted by Tammy’s Recipes
Make Something Monday is hosted by Go Graham Go! and Jolly Mom
Tasty Tuesday is hosted by Forever Wherever.
I Am Blissfully Domestic is hosted by Blissfully Domestic.


-Jerri

Filed Under: Recipe of the Week, soup

Menu Plan Monday for March 9

March 8, 2009 7 Comments

It’s menu time again. My mom was nice enough to bring some BBQ ribs by today, which takes care of one of our meals this week. And today I went ahead and made a pot of chicken tortilla soup. I divided it into two bowls and placed the bowls in the freezer. One will be our dinner for Wednesday, and the other be used later on.

My husband just started a new job a few weeks ago, and he’s working a rotating shift. It makes meal planning a little harder, because I have to work around his schedule. Off days and day shift are easy to plan, but night shift is a little harder because I have to be able to throw things together fairly quickly. To make those days a little easier, I’m making things that don’t take a lot of effort or time to cook, and I’m trying to make things ahead of time (like the soup), or else make those nights our leftover nights. It’s taking a little extra planning on my part, but I know I’ll adjust soon. Wish me luck!

Breakfasts: french toast sticks, Bagel-Fuls, Toaster Strudel, gravy & biscuit, cereal

Lunches: roast meat sandwich, turkey sandwich, hot dogs, tuna sandwich

Dinners:
Monday – BBQ Ribs, Potatoes Au Gratin, and Baked Beans
Tuesday – Hamburger Steak, biscuits, and leftovers
Wednesday – Chicken Tortilla Soup
Thursday – lasagna & garlic bread
Friday – Chicken Pizza (didn’t have last week)
Saturday – Red Beans & Rice, corn, biscuits
Sunday – leftovers

Visit Org Junkie for more menus, recipes, and fun.


-Jerri

Filed Under: menu plan Monday

Camera Critters: One of my Office Assistants in Action

March 7, 2009 11 Comments
Camera Critters

Camera Critters has a very cute meme every Saturday. Since I’m obsessed with always taking pictures of our cats, I thought it would be fun to partcipate sometimes. For this post, I’m sharing some pictures of one of my office assistants, Miss Dixie Belle.

Anytime I’m at my computer, I usually have an office assisant cat nearby. Here is Dixie sitting at her my desk. Do you think she knows she’s having her picture taken?

Here she is posing behind her “name plate.”

As you can see, she is very sophisticated.

Here she is checking to see that her named is spelled correctly.

Here she is relaxing while pondering our latest post.

And here she writing a post or perhaps it’s a letter to the editor, explaining why she should get a raise.


-Jerri


Filed Under: About Me, Pets

Love in Bloom Giveaway Winner

March 7, 2009 1 Comment

We have a winner in our Love In Bloom All Four Seasons Greeting Card Template giveaway sponsored by little T studio. The winner is Angel from Angel’s Blog. Congratulations!

Thank you to everyone who entered and made the giveaway a success. I hope you’ll come back to participate in future giveaways.

-Jerri


Filed Under: announcements

Awards and Winners

March 7, 2009 13 Comments

Rosie at Baking Cakes Galore passed along a lovely collection of awards to me. Thanks so much, Rosie, for thinking of me. I’m honored!






Now I must pass these awards along to some other great bloggers. Congrats to all you guys! Keep up the good work.

Lamp Unto My Feet
Barbara Bakes
Sugarcraft by Soni
My Kitchen Treasures
Frugal Domestic Goddess
Dunkin Cooking the Semi-Homemade Way
Sugarplum Cottage
Cooking and the City
Blue Eyed Blessings
Her Southern Charm
Tater Tots and Jello
Alpine Klein Bunch – One Day at a Time
A Southern Grace
Nina’s Culinary Creations
Cupcakes and Crinoline

-Jerri

Filed Under: announcements

Adventures In Shopping: Thrift Store Finds

March 4, 2009 20 Comments

Today I’m sharing with you a couple of my latest thrift store finds. When I was a kid my mom always used to take me to yard sales, and over the last several years she’s become a thrift store fanatic. So I’ve started going some too. Thrift stores are a great place to find good items for cheap. I collect a whole bunch of stuff, so I really like walking through and seeing what kind of collectibles and decor items I can find. And sometimes I find good books and toys too. Today I’m sharing a few collectibles and a desk organizer that I bought.

Bear & Snow Bear Figurine – 50 cents.
Fruit Pie Salt & Pepper Shakers – 50 cents.
Bride & Groom Bear – 75 cents.

I just loved the fruit pie salt shaker set. The crust is one shaker, and the fruit topping is the other shaker. Too cute!

And I’ve always liked bears, so I just had to get these. And there’s a special story that goes along with the bride & groom bear. When I was in the first grade, someone we went to church with had a home interiors party, and they were having drawings for prizes. My mom and dad won a bride & groom figurine just like the one pictured above. When I was a teenager my mom gave the figurine to me, and it’s been kept in my China cabinet ever since. I’ve never seen another one like it, until I was walking through the thrift store one day. I couldn’t believe my eyes, when I found it. It was so neat. I just had to purchase it.
Cute Desk Organizer with 6 compartments and a drawer. – $4

I saw this one from across the store. I love desk organizers, and this is one of the cutest I’ve seen. I keep most of my office supplies hidden in drawers and containers, but I’m using this to store some of the supplies that I’m using currently (and most often). There’s a notepad, post-it notes and flags, batteries (for the digital camera), a roll of tape, a drink coaster, an eraser, pencil lead, and a pocket calendar. And in the drawer at the bottom are some stamps, stickers for greeting cards, a checkbook, and a couple of envelopes.

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This post is being featured on WFMW at We Are THAT Family.


-Jerri


Filed Under: saving money, shopping

Recipe of the Week: Chicken Cordon Bleu

March 2, 2009 17 Comments

This week’s recipe is my chicken cordon bleu. It’s another easy recipe, and I don’t have to go out and buy anything special to make it, which is always a plus. And if you’re not a fan of ham and cheese, this recipe is easily customized with your favorite ingredients.

One change I make a lot is to use American cheese rather than the Swiss. We like the Swiss, but we don’t always have it on hand, so the American is a great alternative.


Recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu

Ingredients:
2-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
thin sliced ham (2-5 pieces per chicken breast)
swiss cheese and/or American cheese (1-2 slices per chicken breast)
pepper/seasonings or shake & bake mix.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray baking sheet or casserole dish with cooking spray. Flatten out the chicken breasts. Place meat and cheese on top of chicken. Fold chicken breast over and stick 3-5 toothpicks in the chicken to secure it shut. Top each chicken breast with your choice of season. I use a little pepper and/or Morton’s Nature’s Season, and sometimes I sprinkle a little Shake n’ Bake seasoning on top as well. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until done.

Optional: 5 minutes before chicken is done, take out, and place half a piece of cheese on each chicken breast, or sprinkle some shredded cheese on top. Replace in oven and finish baking.

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Please visit the following sites for more great recipes & other ideas:
Tempt My Tummy Tuesday is hosted by Blessed With Grace.
Homemaker Mondays is hosted by 11th Heaven’s Homemade Haven.
Making A Happy Home Monday is hosted by As For Me and My House….
Kitchen Tip Tuesdays is hosted by Tammy’s Recipes
Make Something Monday is hosted by Go Graham Go! and Jolly Mom
Tasty Tuesday is hosted by Forever Wherever.
I Am Blissfully Domestic is hosted by Blissfully Domestic.


-Jerri


Filed Under: casseroles and quick meals, Recipe of the Week

Menu Plan Monday for March 2

March 2, 2009 1 Comment

Breakfasts – banana nut muffins, waffles, oatmeal, yogurt, bacon & eggs

Lunches – Leftovers, Turkey sandwiches, Tuna Sandwiches, Chili Dogs

Dinners
Monday – Roast, Pinto Beans, Deviled Eggs, Slaw
Tuesday – Leftovers from Monday
Wednesday – Cheeseburger Helper
Thursday – Homemade pizza. I’m going to make buffalo chicken pizza and/or barbecue chicken pizza. (These are new. I’ll be making them up as I go along.)
Friday – General Tso’s Chicken & Egg Rolls (My husband picked these out at the freezer section of the store), in addition I’ll probably whip up a little stir-fry to go with it
Saturday – Spaghetti w/ garlic bread
Sunday – leftovers

Visit Org Junkie for more menus, recipes, and fun.


-Jerri

Filed Under: menu plan Monday

Organizing Round-Up: My Recipe Binder

February 27, 2009 8 Comments

Organizing Blog

This month’s Organizing Round-Up Project was recipes. Last year I started printing out recipes from the internet, and placing them in a simple binder, complete with page protectors, as seen below:

(For tips on organizing your own recipe binder you can read my post from earlier this week.)

Back in January, in an effort to rid by computer of dozens of bookmarked recipes, I copied all the best recipes I had saved and placed them in a word document to be printed. I then sorted through all my recipes and divided them into categories.

I used colored tab sheets to divide the binder into sections. My categories are: Appetizers, Soups, Main Dishes/Casseroles, Breads/Sides, Cakes/Pies, Cookies/Candies, and Misc.

In addition to my recipe binder, I have two recipe boxes. And I decided to place my recipe cards into the binder so that all my recipes would be in one place. The Hershey’s box shown below is now empty. (I haven’t yet decided what to use it for.) And now I’m storing blank recipe cards in the green box.
Below are some recipe cards from one of the boxes. I sorted all the cards into piles so that they could be placed in the appropriate section of the binder.

And I used 4X6 photo pages to insert the recipe cards in. If you want you can place 2 cards in the same pocket back to back. But for cards that had a photo on one side and a recipe on the other, I placed a single card in a pocket, so that I can see the recipe and the photo, just by flipping the page and without removing the card from the page.

Head over to Org Junkie to see how others organized their recipes.

-Jerri


Filed Under: organizing, recipes, Simple Solutions

My Newest Sponsor: Lavender Cottage

February 25, 2009 2 Comments

I would like to introduce you to my newest sponsor: Lavender Cottage.

Lavender Cottage is a jewelry shop owned by Cheryl from Tennessee. Cheryl’s been creating jewelry for almost 20 years. She just celebrated the one year anniversary of her etsy shop’s opening and is very happy to be a full time jewelry artist.

Cheryl describes herself as a “totally addicted metalsmith and rock lover in the happy pursuit of combining the two into lovely pieces of wearable art.” This statement completely sums up the Lavender Cottage shop.

The jewelry at Lavender Cottage is uniquely designed and is of a high quality. Cheryl’s pieces are entirely handmade. She uses mostly fine silver (99.99 pure, and less subject to tarnishing, but softer than sterling), as well as sterling silver, copper, brass, and sometimes gold, and the stones and minerals in her jewelry are usually natural and not heat-treated unless noted in the description.

Cheryl got her start in metal smithing a few years ago by learning how to fuse fine silver which got her over her fear of using a torch. She now has a big acetylene/air torch, and continues to learn more every year. This year she learned fold forming and anti-clastic raising, and has been using these techniques in new flower and leaf pieces. (these are over in her 1000 Markets shop) http://lavendercottage.1000markets.com/. She is also going to be getting back to her Stones of the American West series of pieces which uses one of a kind stones found only in the US.

Each of Cheryl’s pieces is literally a beautiful work of art! I hope you’ll all go see for yourself and visit Lavender Cottage!

http://www.lavendercottage.etsy.com/


-Jerri

Filed Under: Sponsors
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