A NEW, New Year's Tradition

There is a recipe in my family, from my dad's side of the family. Ham Bone Soup. I can't think of a time I didn't just absolutely love this milk based soup...so after Christmas, with the leftover spiral ham, I have decided to start the tradition of having Ham Bone Soup to welcome in the new year.  Of course this year it's a few days after the actual new year, but it's all good.  It's cold outside, and this is a perfect day for this simple and delicious soup!

Summer Savory is the only spice in this soup.  

I keep it on hand strictly for this recipe. 

No other uses for me, yet...  

It was a bit difficult to find a few years ago, but I found it with the help of my parents. The cost is on the higher side as far as seasonings go, but it is well worth it as nothing compares, or can be substituted.

When I use the word recipe for this particular meal, it really is more of a list of stuff, with no real measurements.  But that's all good, it makes this an easy recipe to follow exactly.  Which I'm not gonna do because the only recipe I follow exactly is when baking, and I'm not baking.

To start this soup you need a ham bone, with meat on it of course.

The flavors from the ham and bone will be the flavors of the soup.  My ham is of course from Christmas, and I did a copycat recipe for Honeybaked ham.  Turned out goooooood. So carefully cut the chunks of meat away from the bone, and chunk them up, put them in your soup pot with the hambone.

Then cover the ham pieces and hambone with water, and this is when you get a spice bag or fill your own teabag and put the summer savory in the bag.

Toss that on top and bring it to a boil.  This is going to simmer for a good length of time.  Because you want to make sure all of the marrow, and other goodness found in the ham bone has had a chance to seep out and into the water and ham pieces.

While the yumminess is boiling (don't leave it on high, just let it simmer) it's time to dice up the rest of the soup ingredients!  So two can's of Green beans (I'm a cheater I know, but fresh is sooo hard to find this time of year) some carrots and some potatoes. 

A few weeks ago my MIL made a potato soup that had bacon and browned onions.  So I'm gonna add some bacon browned onions to this soup, at least this time around.

Peel and cube the potatoes, and the carrots.  Plop them in a bowl of cold water because you won't add these until a half hour before you are ready to eat.

Then cut up the bacon fat, and render that out in a skillet, remove the chunks of fat and then add the onions.

A half hour before you are ready to eat, fish out the bone and finish removing whatever meat was stuck to it.  Put the bones back in the water then toss the potatoes and carrots in.  These will take about 20 minutes to cook.

Then drain off about half of the water, and remove the savory bag.

Add the onions, and green beans (drained), then add milk to give the liquid volume you desire.  This needs to sit on low heat until warmed up.  Trust me you don't want to boil the milk. Yuck!

Serve warm and enjoy!

God gave us food, the Devil gave us recipes!

Tea towel by Peg's Pantry

Oh how true.  And tonight it no exception!  I am making Coq au vin, thanks to my mom mentioning that it had...wait for it...bacon in it...and then turned my cook book to that page before she left today...so why not?

So I will be making the above, with green beans and potatoes on the side. I started by washing my vegetables and thawing my chicken.

I washed it all at the same time...

Make the Bouquet Garni

Fry the bacon....and while that is frying I chopped all of the veggies for the main dish and the side dish.

I never get tired of pictures of bacon frying...

Coat the chicken in the flour mixture then it's time to brown the chicken in those yummy yummy bacon drippings!

Add the onion and mushroom (I also added the carrots)

Add the remaining ingredients










Simmer for 1 hour.  It already smells DEVINE!




In the meantime I have the cast iron skillet with bacon, butter and onion starting to cook in the oven, with the yukon gold potatoes on top of it all.

With only 25 minutes left to cook I added the green beans on top of the potatoes and stirred it up as best I could to get everything coated in bacon and butter.

Serve it all together on a plate!

Enjoy!!!

Triple D Chili

Last night my DH and I were watching "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" and it seemed like every episode we watched had hot dogs, so of course we both got hungry for hot dogs!  Chili cheese dogs to be precise.  One particular episode the owner showed how to make chili from scratch.  So that is   what I am attempting to replicate tonight.

There is no set recipe, and there are no measurements aside from the pound of hamburger.  So you will need to gather

Canola Oil and Olive oil

Beef Soup base

Ketchup and Mustard

White Vinegar and
Worchestershire sauce (not pictured)

Paprika

Chili Powder

Oregano

Garlic Powder

Cumin

Ground Pepper

Onion and Carrots

 After spending several hours at the Zoo for a birthday party I used the easy route and used the food processor to chop up the carrots and onion.

Set a pan on the stove and pour in a blop (yes this is a technical term) of each of the oils.  The sweat the carrots and onion.

Once they are sweating good add the hamburger

And the spices, all just kinda thrown in depending on how you think you will like it.  And I forgot to mention that you need some water (12-ish ounces) too...so add that now.

Yes, at this point the hamburger is raw but that is OK because this is going to cook and simmer and make you drool for 30-45 minutes.  After 15 minutes or so taste the chili to see if you like the flavors, and then you can add more of any of the spices, whatever you think it needs.

Almost done!

Once the chili is done it's time to assemble the chili dog!  Bun, grilled or boiled dog, top with chili and cheese.

ENJOY!