Saturday, September 11, 2010

Slow Cooker Soup, Homemade Bread, and Grandma's Spice Tins

Thursday was a chilly day and I had to work that afternoon. So I decided to put Slow Cooker Tomato Soup in the crockpot for dinner. It's a Weight Watcher's recipe and is 0 points! I layered in fresh spinach leaves, 2 sliced carrots, 2 celery stems sliced, 28 ounces of stewed tomatoes that I gave a whirl to in the blender first, 4 cups of chicken broth, a chopped onion, and some basil, oregano, and crushed red pepper. Set it on high for about 5 hours.Of course homemade soup begs to be accompanied by homemade bread. Oh how I L O V E homemade bread. Today's bread du jour was French Bread with a cup of whole wheat flour added for nutrition. I make the dough in my bread maker, then divide it into 3 cute little artisan loaves to rise and bake in the oven.
And here are the warm little cuties...I take a stick of butter and rub over the hot crust just til the crust is soft and buttery. And since there were 3 loaves, I wrapped up 1 loaf to give to a neighbor I had not yet met on our street.
The soup smelled like Italian goodness when we walked in the door after work. Even my 12 year old son ate it cheerfully and said it was 'not too bad.' THAT'S a complement about homemade soup from a 12 year old boy. : ) We ate the leftovers today, but I added 1/2 pound of ground beef and it was even tastier. Plus more filling.
In other news, autumn seems to have arrived in the past week here in Indiana. Yippee! We even finally had some rain on Friday. So needed. So I've started to decorate for fall just a bit. This past weekend I inherited my sweet Grandma's antique spice tins and bottles. So here are some of them on my sweet little window-ledge-scape in the kitchen.
And I put the others here on my oak china hutch by my vintage Betty Crocker cookbook. I love all things vintage and really think I should have been born in the '30s. :)
So that is what is happening at my house lately...what about yours? Enjoy your weekend!
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