Sweet Potato Soup

June's Sweet Potato Soup

Dice an onion
Dice 3 stocks of celery
Heat pan and put a little olive oil in.
Cook the onion and celery until it starts to turn brown.

Scrape the skin off and dice one sweet potato (the orange kind - about 7 inches long)
Add to the pan, stir.

Add about 2 T vegetable stock concentrate and about 4 cups of water.

Cover and simmer until soft.

Use potato masher to break up the potato.

Serve.  Delicious.  It's a sweet warm wonderful soup and I recommend it!

We had it with the last of the salad fixings - greens, tomato, celery, carrot - sprinkled with celery seed before adding the dressing.

Add a glass of red wine - a wonderful meal on this cold, cold day.

Oh My Brie and Fig Preserve Stuffed French Toast

Last night we had purchased some challah bread so I tried to copy a delicious stuffed French bread that we had had at S&S Deli.  The photo I took doesn't do it justice so next time, here is what I did:

Brie and Fig Preserve Stuffed French Toast

Cut the bread in 1 to 1/25 inch slices.
Put in mixture of 5 eggs and about 1/4 c milk to soak.
Turned over and put two think slices of brie and about 1 T of the preserves on one side, then topped it with another piece (egg side in).  Then I returned it to the egg mixture to soak some more.

Preheat oven to 300. 

When the four sandwiches were done, I put a little butter in the pan and put the sandwiches in the pan to brown (turning them to try to seal the cheese in with egg but that didn't really work).  

Put the pan in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Served with unnecessary butter and syrup.  Delightful to have as a first meal of the day (around 2:30p).  If I was having company I would add some sausages and fruit.  We were so late with eating I thought it would be best to just eat!

Mushroom Soup

Mushroom Soup

2 T butter
1/2 yellow onion sliced
1 container of sliced mushrooms
salt and pepper
2 handfuls string beans cut into 1/2 pieces
1 cherry tomato cut into 3 pieces
1/2 carrot sliced thinly into coins

Stir while cooking on stove top

2 handfuls of wheat flour sprinkled on top
left over cream (about 2 T) sprinkled on top and stirred
about 1/4 milk stirred in

1 1/2 T vegetable broth mix
about 2 c water
stir and cover

(I should have added the cream and milk last as I was afraid to let it simmer for long.)

Very pretty and tasty.  More like a mushroom stew really than soup.

Earthquake Cake

Once at home we relaxed a bit - then Alex and I made Earthquake Cake....

Ready for Oven

EARTHQUAKE CAKE  (From Lib-quilter Mary in Panama)

1+ c. chopped pecans and.or walnuts
1+ c. coconut
1 chocolate cake mix (or make your own from scratch)
1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese
1 stick butter (1/4 pound)
1 box powdered sugar (approx 4 cups)

Spray PAM in a 9x13"  inch pan. Sprinkle nuts, then coconut on bottom of pan. Mix cake mix according to directions (see note below) and pour over nuts and coconut.

Baked

Melt butter and cream cheese together. Add the powdered sugar to the butter/cream cheese mixture. Stir to blend. Drop this mixture in blobs on top of cake mix by spoonfuls. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until done.

Note: Most often, I add 1/2 cup grated baking chocolate (preferably organic chocolate from the chocolate farm next door to us) to a packaged cake mix. And then I often sprinkle chocolate nibs on top. Nibs are the crushed (but not ground) roasted cacao beans.

It was delicious and cuts up very pretty slices with the nuts and baked in frosting peeking thru the dark cake batter.  

We had to add about 20 minutes to the baking time.  






We had with milk and enjoyed the experience of making it and eating it!

Added later:  The cake is even better after being refrigerated!

Made for the evening before Alex left Boston for San Diego.