Soup and Snow

I love both soup and snow, as the title suggests.  Lately, I've been seeing plenty of both.

Whew!  What a winter it's been!

 

I made a batch of hamburger soup this weekend that was a hit.  Soup is one of my favorites.  I put soup on the same level with cookies and bread.  Who doesn't love it?  I like simple recipes for soup, though, when I'm the one making them.  Start mentioning making a roux or using an immersion blender and I'm out.

 

Saturday night we went to mass at 4:00.  We came out to, you guessed it, more snow.  Was I ever glad I had this in the crockpot for dinner...

 

This is the first recipe I've ever made up myself.  Are you impressed?  Weeeellll... I didn't exactly make it up from nowhere.  I've seen several recipes for "Hamburger Soup", but none of them satisfied me completely.   They either had too few ingredients or too many.  So I combined what I liked from each of them and came up with this. That's allowed, right?  Lots of people create lasagna or chili recipes, but it's not like they came up with the idea of using cheese or beans on their own.  Anyway, this recipe was a success.  My kids and my husband loved it.  It will definitely go into the regular monthly rotation.


Hamburger Soup

1lb hamburger
1 medium onion, diced
1-2 tsp of minced garlic
1 box of beef broth
1 can tomato soup, plus one can of water
1 small can of tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can of corn
1 1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 1/2 cup chopped celery
Half  a 14.5 oz. box of pasta of your choice (I used Barilla Plus Farfalle because I knew my daughter would love the bows.)

Directions:
Brown hamburger with onions and minced garlic.  Drain.  In a crockpot, combine hamburger, beef broth, tomato soup, water, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, corn, carrots, and celery.  Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours.  During the last hour, dump in half the box of pasta.  Serve with grated parmesan cheese and crusty French bread.

I can't do much about the snow, but if the winter blues are getting you down, I can tell you that making a warm bowl of soup is a surefire way to comfort yourself.

Kim