Loaded Baked Potato Soup

It's supposed to be cold here this week and nothing says comfort food like a deep bowl of Loaded Baked Potato Soup! 

Ingredients:
- 5lbs Russet Potatoes, washed but NOT peeled. Diced into 1/2 inch(ish) cubes
- 1 large yellow onion, diced
- 10 cloves of garlic (you can use whole, crushed, or minced-I prefer minced)
- 8 cups chicken or vegetable stock...OR that handy homemade turkey stock !
- 16 oz cream cheese (I used lowfat)
- 1 TBSP seasoned salt or all-purpose seasoning

Optional Garnishes:
- Crumbled bacon (I like turkey bacon)
- Shredded cheddar cheese
- Green onions

Directions:

- Add potatoes, onion, garlic, seasoning and your choice of stock to slow cooker.

- Cook on high for 6 hours, or low for 10 hours.
- Using an emulsion blender (love my Cuisinart one!), blend until mostly smooth
- Stir in the cream cheese and allow to melt. Stir until melted, then use emulsion blender to blend to desired consistency.
- Top with your choice of garnishes & serve!

This recipe makes a BIG batch! It freezes great! I like to store in quart-sized Ziplocs; makes perfect 2-person servings.

Christmas Leftovers-Homemade Turkey Broth

One of the best things about leftover turkey carcasses from Thanksgiving/Christmas?? Pure, amazing, homemade, turkey stock without all the crap on the back of the box that no one can pronounce! Great to use in soups, stews, and many other recipes.

Depending on the size of your turkey you might be able to fit the whole thing on your slow cooker. If not, break it apart into big enough pieces that they won't be super hard to fish out when your broth is done. Keep in mind that cooking in the slow cooker for so long will have any meat/cartilage literally falling off the bones when you pick them out at the end, so I try to keep the bones as big as possible so I don't lose any. 

Ingredients: 

4 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
2 large carrots, coarsely chopped
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

Directions: 

-Add all ingredients to your slow cooker and fill it with water. 

-Cook on high for 1 hour, then low for 12-15 hours. 

-Use a colander to strain the liquid to remove any bones, meat and veggies.

-Discard any bones and veggies; save meat for future soups/stews-watch out for tiny bones. 

-Cool in refrigerator; once cool skim the fat off the top. 

Note: While cooling in the fridge your stock may become very congealed and have a "jelly-like" appearance when you remove it - this is good! It's not at all appetizing, but it will be! This "jello" just means you have a well-concentrated stock that is packed with flavor! Once heated it will become watery again and it will be delicious to be used to make soups! (recipes for those to follow)

Store in air-tight containers in freezer. I use a few different containers (2-4 cups per container) so I can grab what I want to use instead of having to thaw the whole batch and waste what I don't use. To store, I put plastic wrap over the container, then put the lid on to seal it. 

Good luck! 

"Green Monster" and other Smoothies

I've been obsessed with smoothie-making recently because I am terrible about sitting down to eat breakfast so smoothies-on-the-go are so simple and delicious. 

This PB/Banana Smoothie courtesy of Fitness Magazine is delicious and so simple with only 3 ingredients! Check out the link for other great smoothie recipes too!

PB Banana Smoothie: 

10 oz skim milk or plain soymilk (I like vanilla soymilk or fat free milk)

1 Tbsp peanut butter

1 medium banana

*recommended for thicker consistency: add 6 ice cubes

"Green Monster" smoothies are all the rage recently and being that I am NOT a breakfast person I decided to try a few different versions of these smoothies. I tweaked a few recipes and made this one my own, and it is delicious. The color is not at all appealing, but it's delicious, nonetheless. 
I make 5 quart-sized bags at the beginning of the week and leave them in the fridge and just make one bag per morning and it makes enough for both my husband and I to have a good-sized smoothie. 
In each bag: 
1/2 C blueberries
6-8 Strawberries
1 peach, roughly chopped (or 1 heaping up frozen peaches if fresh aren't in season)
1 handful spinach
Morning of smoothie-making: 
Empty contents of one bag into blender
ADD the following: 
1 C vanilla soymilk
1-1.5 C ice
1 banana
1 Tbsp Greek yogurt
2 tsp honey
Blend to desired consistency

**Other variations: I've substituted raspberries when I didn't have blueberries; fresh lemon juice or orange slices for a little tang; vanilla yogurt when I didn't have Greek; etc...get creative!

2012 Reflection

Merry Christmas (Eve!)! Thought I'd start my new blog out with a bang and post my first entry here on Christmas Eve, reflecting quickly on the year of all years...2012. 

It's been a busy year in the now-Berger household. Cody's been busy with work (earning his 5-year plaque at the company party this year) and school where he is on track to graduate this coming Spring 2013 - yay! I've started a new job after working at my previous job since right after I graduated high school. As much as I loved my years of teaching Preschool, I am so in love with my current work. I work as an Infant/Toddler teacher, mainly with the infant age group of 12 weeks to 12 months. They keep me on my toes, work me to the bone and steal my heart and wrap me around their little fingers every single day. Each of them is such an amazing little blessing and they never cease to amaze me with their growth and learning and they make me look more and more forward to starting a family of our own in the future. In addition to working full time I continue to work running my Pampered Chef business on the side, and though not as thriving as I'd like it to be it definitely helps bring in a little extra cash! 

Obviously the event of the year was our well-planned, much-awaited Wedding.   Before the wedding I got to celebrate with two great bridal showers, one hosted by my mom and one by Cody's grandma, and also a fun weekend in San Francisco with my best friend, my soon-to-be-sister-in-law and her best friend. Finally, August 4, 2012 we were so blessed with an absolutely perfect day and evening with the best friends and family we could ever imagine. Everyone warned to "expect the unexpected" and "not everything goes perfectly", well our wedding was definitely an exception to typical wedding expectations then because everything we had planned and prepped was absolutely PERFECT. The weather was amazing (slightly overcast allowing for gorgeous lighting for pictures, followed by an amazingly beautiful sunset), food was good (at least the few bites I ate were), flowers and decor were perfect, the company was the best, our bridal party looked GREAT in their "sand", "tangelo" and "fuchsia" attire and everyone had a blast!

A few weeks later we enjoyed a week-long honeymoon to sunny Southern California where we spent a few days in LA/Anaheim visiting Disneyland and CA Adventure and Universal Studios, followed by a few days lounging on beaches in San Diego, visiting the San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld  It was a nice getaway and we were so thankful to receive such great wedding gifts that contributed to each of our adventures. 

Everything from then to now is kind of a blur - we have been so busy! I feel like we just unpacked from our honeymoon and now Christmas is here and 2013 is right around the corner!

We are spending our first married Christmas Eve in Half Moon Bay this year; we've been down here since Friday and will head back home tomorrow (Christmas) morning, get cleaned up, organized and then head up the hill to spend Christmas afternoon/evening with my family. It's our second year with this arrangement and it seems to work pretty well - it's kind of a bummer not getting to see ALL of Cody's family for Christmas, but we see who we can while we're down here. We got to visit yesterday with his cousin Sherry, her husband Phil and their new adorable baby, Luke, who has grown SO much since we saw him in October right after he was born. Cody's parents and sisters came down tonight and will be here until Wednesday after some day-after-Christmas-shopping madness. We had a delicious dinner of salad, bread and oil-garlic-lemon marinated crab. Yummmm! 

We have been so blessed with an amazing 2012 and can't wait to see what 2013 holds for us! We wish our friends and family a wonderful end to the Holiday season and a happy, healthy 2013!