Sunday, February 28, 2010

French Onion Soup Round 4

My husband loves French Onion Soup and I love my husband so I have been trying different recipes to find the "perfect recipe".  It is all just a matter of preference to what you really want in your soup. After using 1/4 of a cup of chopped garlic in todays recipe, I am not sure if anyone will want to be close to me at the gym tomorrow. Todays recipe was really good! It had the right balance of wine, caramelized onions, garlic and broth. I think one of the keys is to really cook the onion over low for40 minutes. They should be a dark, rich color. I found the recipe from Cuisine at Home Splendid Soups.

Sweat in Olive Oil and butter then caramelize:
2 yellow onions and 2 red onions sliced thin
1/4 cup chopped garlic
2 TBS Olive Oil
1/4 cup butter
Add And Reduce:
1 cup dry wine
1/3 cup dry sherry
Stir In: Add and Simmer
3TBS flour
3 Cups Beef  Broth
3 Cups Chicken Broth
1 TBS thyme
salt and pepper to taste
8 slice french bread
1 cup gruyere cheese
1/2 cup parmesan
Sweat onion and garlic in oil and butter for 40 minutes. Add wine and sherry, cook until wine evaporates, stirring often.
Stir in flour and cook 1 minute. Add broths, thyme, salt and pepper: bring to simmer and cook another 10 minutes.
Toast bread under broiler. Ladle soup into bowls, arrange on baking sheet and then top with bread and then cheese. Broil another 1-2 minutes or until cheese melts. Enjoy!

Friday, February 12, 2010

Our New Kitchen

Mark spent the last few days tiling a backsplash in our  kitchen! I love how it turned out.  I am so glad that I married such a "handy" man. He has big plans for the rest of our house as well. I will post pictures later of our bathroom that he tiled.  It has been a crazy week in Ohio. We have only had school 2 of the 5 days. We took the kids to COSI today. What an amazing childrens museum it is! We would highly recommend a day at this fun Science Museum! 

Monday, February 8, 2010

Our big snowstorm!


We have had so much snow! It is always so much fun the first time it snows. The kids want to play outside, build snow forts and go sledding. The favorite way to warm up is with hot coco and lots of marshmallows. Anna also celebrated her 8th birthday at Barnes and Nobles with a book party. She had allot of fun picking out books and doing a craft with her friends.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Shrimp Bisque

Jennifer of Blessed Home chose this months recipe from Barefoot Bloggers for Shrimp Bisque. I am in great need of a new camera. I don't think you are supposed to have to hit the camera for it to turn on?! Please ignore the fuzzy photo! This was such a wonderfully delightful soup. I had a little problem assembling all of the ingredients’. We went to the store twice for tomato paste. It was one of those days that nothing seemed to go as planned. I served this with crusty French bread and roasted garlic. Between my husband and self we consumed an entire head of the roasted garlic. I bet that is why the treadmills on both side of me were empty at the gym the next day... Definitely a hit in our household and we will be making this again in the near future. I don't think I enjoyed peeling all the shrimp but it really did add allot of flavor to the stock.

Trying New Things

This past year has been a year of change. We moved from a huge running community to an area that does not have the biking and running trails...