Posts Tagged ‘soup’

This past weekend I went home to celebrate my mother’s birthday and have a mini vacation to celebrate autumn in Kansas City, one of my favorite things in the entire world.  I went to the Andy Warhol exhibit at Union Station, Pierpont’s for lunch, the KC Renaissance Festival (in full garb as my sisters and I used to work there), Vaughn’s Apple Orchard, Weston Red Barn Farm, and made butternut squash soup plus baked apples with vanilla ice cream for dessert. A whirlwind weekend, but perfect from beginning to end.

I don’t know about you but after that last post I needed a break from complicated cooking. And since the temperature keeps dropping, my soup Achilles heel weakened me once again and I felt the need to make something that required a lot of simmering and an over-sized Dutch oven.

Now as much as I love Kraft singles between sliced Wonder bread with a bowl of Campbell’s watery tomato soup, sometimes I’m craving something a little more… substantial. I love a good chunky tomato soup so it’s filling and feels like a meal, not just an appetizer or snack, and this recipe fits that bill quite nicely. The texture is thick and hearty, perfect for dipping say, French bread toasted with some Parmesan cheese sprinkled over it. Or maybe a grilled cheese with rye bread and pepperjack sandwiched between it. No matter what you pair with it, this soup is rich, satisfying, and the perfect thing to warm you up on a cold, lazy day.

And a fun note to end with! I recently won Endless Simmer’s contest for Smallest Kitchen (hooray! sort of?) and they gave me a nice little shout-out so I wanted to return the favor. Thanks, guys!

Happy Autumn, everyone! Well, maybe not happy, since this is the weather that greeted me yesterday:

Talk about inspiration for something warming.

You know that scene in “Ratatouille” when Anton Ego is stopped dead in his tracks when he smells and tastes Remy’s ratatouille because it so acutely reminds him of his mother and his childhood? That’s what this dish is to me. Not only does this chili remind me of autumn and thus it was my first dish I happily made for the season, but it so embodies my vision of my mother in the kitchen.  Almost every Sunday in the fall she would make a huge batch of soup or stew, whether it be chili, potato soup, beef tomato rice, chicken noodle, etc, and always make it an all-day affair. Even when I would come home once in awhile from Cornell my mom would still make a batch at an ungodly hour on Sunday morning so I’d have a few Tupperware containers to take back with me.

The chili was always the best though. I remember asking my mother for the recipe time and time again to which she would always reply “There’s no real recipe – it’s a method, and every batch is different, you know that.”

So here is my version of my mother’s method, which she learned from her own mother.  It’s such a simple dish, with very few (and cheap) ingredients. It’s all about time and layering flavors (like any good soup or stew) so this isn’t something you can whip together on the fly and eat 20 minutes later (in my dreams).  I use almost all the same ingredients my mom and grandma do and did, except I change the cooking method a bit to keep the texture of the veggies a bit sharper and I up the spice level quite a bit.  The celery adds such a nice freshness to the chili and alongside the sweet tomatoes, nothing feels or smells more like autumn to me than this dish.

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So yesterday I got back from my fun little vacation to Charleston, SC. What a gorgeous place, inside and out. Just beautiful architecture, flora, people and food. Something I kept remarking on was how good the entire city smelled.  Like flowers and breakfast breads and salty air.  We had a ton of fun visiting some truly remarkable houses and sites, walking the city, eating lots of great seafood and just relaxing.  Here’s a (very) small selection of the photos I took – mostly the food since, well, that’s always my favorite part anyway.