Freezer Soup
I’m a cook from scratch kind of person and I really hate producing food container waste. Thus I have all sorts of wide mouth pint mason jars in my freezer filled with all varieties of ingredients. When I’m cooking I often double or triple a recipe and freeze some. I do the same when preparing individual ingredients. Thus I can make a pot of delicious soup with ingredients from my freezer is only an hour and it will taste like it has been simmering all day!
Yesterday was the perfect soup day, but I was busy running errands and working until about four. No problem, I went to the basement freezer and came upstairs with: chorizo, black beans, red beans, green peppers, sweet corn, chicken stock, and spinach. I pulled onions, carrots, and garlic from the pantry along with a few spices and a soup was born. I love using wide mouth half pint mason jars for freezing because with only a minute or two submerged in warm water the contents will come out quite easily. They defrost quickly in a pan on the stove and are the ultimate homemade convenience food.
In about 30 minutes I had a delicious pot of soup, a big one to eat on all week for lunches. Some of it will probably end up back in wide mouth jars and in the freezer for when we need a bowl of soup in minutes. Best of all, it’s healthy, mostly homegrown, and best of all there was not one can or package that had to be thrown away!
What’s your favorite quick meal during the cooler winter months?
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Oh Tannenbaum
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us!
They are green when summer days are bright,
They are green when winter snow is white.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your branches green delight us!
We arrived back in Maine on Saturday evening right around 10 pm. I’ll share more of our eventful trip tomorrow. After coffee, unpacking and lots of chores on Sunday, we headed out to gather our Christmas tree in the afternoon. We like to cut a free range tree from our property, the less perfect the better.
We found a sweet little balsam fir conveniently located right by the driveway and decided it would be perfect. Out came the ax and down came the tree. The trees in this area need thinned out anyways, so it’s nice to kill two birds with one stone so to speak.
Of course I did double duty and took some photos for the glove company I work for, why not, right?
I trimmed it with lights and then later in the evening I pulled out my etched glass balls to dress it up a bit. A tree like this really needs not much more than one strand of lights, it’s simplicity is really what makes it beautiful. I will give you one great recommendation, put your Christmas tree lights on a dimmer switch, especially if you use the big old fashioned lights. It’s nice to be able to dim the tree in the late evening.
Do you put up a tree to celebrate the holidays?
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Busy, Busy, Busy
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been blogging much this week. We’ve been fairly busy on our time back in Ohio. We’ve been catching up with old friends and spending lots of time with our nieces & nephew.
The kids are old enough now to spend the night at my parents while we’re visiting. So we’ve been enjoying hanging out with them in the evenings, hence no blog posts.
We’ve made Christmas cookies, decorations for the tree, we’ve had pizza parties, brunches and lunches. We’ve been focusing on spending time with friends & family and it has been successful.
Today we’re celebrating Christmas. There will be a big dinner tonight with ham and all the fixings. We’ll exchange gifts and enjoy time together. Then tomorrow we’ll hit the road back and head back to Maine. It’s been a good holiday in Ohio, but I look forward to getting home and spending a relaxing Christmas at home in a few weeks.
Are you celebrating any Christmases yet?
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12 Days of Maine Christmas
The box is back again this year, our nieces and nephews saved it so we could refill it this year. Each day for 12 days they receive a Maine centric gift. There are clues on the container and they have to guess what’s inside.
Every day they video chat with us and try to guess what’s inside each bag/box. Then they get to enjoy what’s inside. It’s a great way to connect with family that lives far away during the holiday season. It also teaches them a little about the place we live.
Last year some of the included items were: Moxie, toothpicks, gummy lobsters and more. I won’t share what’s inside this year, I don’t want to spoil the fun.
Do you have any creative ways to celebrate holidays with family from far away?
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A Longggggg Weekend
Thanksgiving is a long weekend for most, a very long weekend for us. The best laid plans of mice and men never seem to work out, that’s very true with us. It all started when they started calling for a nor’easter to come through on Wednesday night, the night before we planned on traveling to Ohio.
We awoke to 12 inches of snow on Thursday morning, not exactly what you want to see when you have a 15 hour drive planned. The driveway needed plowed and our plow truck is in the shop. Mr Chiots set to work clearing the snow off the driveway with the tractor, not easy or quick, but it works. I dug out the cars, chicken coop and duck coops.
Three hours later we started digging out the pig fences, which is quite a chore. If we weren’t leaving I would have just left them, but we wanted our house sitter to have the peace of mind that the pigs wouldn’t escape.
We finally managed to set off on our journey at 2 pm – which is way.too.late. The roads were clear and traffic was light, travel was great. At about midnight we decided it was safer to stop and get a few hours of sleep then continue on with the last five hours of our journey the next morning. We grabbed a hotel room, slept for four hours and were back on the road at 4:15 am.
We arrived in Ohio around nine then next morning. After a cup of coffee I immediately started cooking our Thanksgiving dinner. It ended up being delicious, all around, from the smoked local turkey to the cranberry relish I brought from Maine.
There was of course another Thanksgiving celebration with Brian’s family and then many more things. This week Mr Chiots is down hunting deer with my dad and I’m visiting with friends and trying to catch up on some work while visiting in Ohio. Long weekends are great, but they can be LONG when things don’t go quite as planned. Hopefully the rest of our visit is less exciting than the first two days.
Do you have t travel for holiday weekend?
