Gone with the wind.........

I had decades worth of recipes written on scraps of paper and 3 x 5 cards that I had been gathering since my teens, my Mom's, and Gramma's, wonderful family recipes of all my favorites ... my Mom's Chili Verde, her amazingly easy, flavorful Chop Suey, Granny's Chicken and Dumplings, desserts, salads, and of course, recipes for those marvelous soups and stews that warmed us on the cold blustery days... anyway, I had always intended to put them all into a book, or to at least digitize them so that they could be saved and shared. I loved those scraps of paper and never got around to it. Those grubby bits of paper and card stock, spattered by ingredients, creased and worn, soft from years of being refolded after use, and smelling oh so faintly of spices, felt real to me. tangible and homey. My mothers familiar scrawl, her funny little notes........Pulling out those handwritten treasures was almost a form of therapy, certainly they were a touchstone for me. They lived in a beautiful wooden and metal scrollwork box on a shelf in my dining room.

We found what was left of the box after the fire, we kinda recognized a bit of the metal scrollwork... my son pried it open while we held our breath, hoping that the once lovely box had somehow protected those vulnerable pages......
Once he peeled back the burned layers of what was left, a few charred edges of my treasured "receipts" fluttered out, then they just disintegrated and disappeared on the breeze.

So my mission now is to piece together those recipes, add in more that I find along the way, and get a cookbook published for my Mom. I think she would have loved that.

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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Meatball Orzo soup, Ala Avgolemono

This was such a fast and easy soup, very few ingredients, and most of those were on hand.  It looks different because it is.  Give it a whirl, you won't be disappointed!

1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 tbl Olive Oil
2 32 ounce containers of chicken broth (or an eqaul amount of stock)
2 14 oz bags of frozen, cooked meatballs (thawed)
1 head of kale or big bunch of spinach, chopped
3/4 cup Orzo( Optional for my low carb friends)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbl dried parsley
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 eggs, (beaten)

Saute onion in olive oil until soft and golden, add meatballs, brown a little, then add Stock, kale, pepper and parsley. Simmer until meatballs are cooked through and kale is wilted, (about 20 minutes). Add Orzo, stir and simmer for another 10 minutes.
In a separate bowl, beat together eggs and lemon juice. Slowly mix in aout 1/4 cup hot soup mix then stir contents of the bowl back into the soup simmer for a minute or two and serve hot

Yum!