Easy Chorizo Sausage And Bean Soup

Posted on September 7, 2011 by easyrecipesandstuffc

EASY RECIPE

Last week we had a couple cool nights so I was inspired to come up with my Easy Chorizo Sausage and Bean Soup that features Chipotle Peppers.  Here is how to cook an easy family or dinner party meal.    

Ingredients:

1 C Roasted Corn (frozen)

2 15 oz cans Pinto Beans

1 15 oz can Black Beans

1 14.5oz can Beef Broth

2 Chipotle Pepper pods from can, packed adobo sauce (maybe less or more depending on you)

1 Cup Onion – diced

12 0z Beef or Pork Chorizo Sausage

1 1/2 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp fresh Thyme minced (and extra for garnish)

1/2 C water

1/4 C Sherry

 

 

Preparation:

Rinse and drain 1 1/2 cans of pinto beans and place in blender.  Add the beef stock, Chipotle pods with whatever adobo sauce is on them, onion, corn, and garlic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blend until all ingredients are blended together into smooth substance.

Place blended ingredients in large pot, add the 1/2 can of remaining pinto beans and the can of rinsed black beans. Add 1/2 cup water and 1/4 cup of Sherry.  Heat pot to low boil and reduce to simmer, add 1 tsp thyme.

Remove sausage skin from Chorizo and brown sausage in fry pan.  There will be a large amount of fat and grease released; most of which I spoon away to lighten the meal. Add the browned (and drained) sausage to the simmering bean mixture, and continue cooking at strong simmer for 20 minutes.  Add more water if the soup gets too thick.

And that’s it, you just made my easy recipe for Chorizo Sausage and Bean Soup!  Add a nice fresh salad and soft tortilla shells for dipping and you are ready for a delicious home cooked meal.     

AND STUFF

I don’t remember the specific year I started skiing, but I was in my early 20’s.  It all started in the mid 1970’s when two entrepreneurs decided to open a ski resort in….wait for it …..Minot, North Dakota.  What could go wrong, no mountains, no population base to speak of, and bone cracking cold weather during the entirety of the ski season. 

Undaunted by the limitations of the area, the entrepreneurs opened Trestle Valley Ski Resort which was near a train trestle spanning the valley between two large hills. Trestle Valley Ski Resort offered a warming hut, 1 chair lift and a T-Bar. The vertical drop was 100 feet. And you know what, it was fun.  

I bought my first set of skis and in no time at all I was charging the 100 foot vert! Sadly for the investors, the novelty of the ski resort could not conquer the areas limitations, and as a result the venture failed.

But now I had the ski bug.  And I had to find some skiing close by. I discovered that a nice summer lake area 90 miles to our north in the Turtle Mountains had a ski resort known as the Bottineau Winter Park.  BWP was a step up for sure, what with its 250 feet of vertical, 9 trails, and back then maybe two or three chair lifts.  But man was it cold. 

In law school my roommate Larry had, in his prior life, been a bartender in Vail.  So he knew a thing or two about skiing, and he for sure knew that the Turtle Mountains were not real mountains.  Truthfully, while the road to BWP does go uphill, you  never actually see a mountain. 

So, we needed to find a mountain on a budget. The solution was easy, drive to Bozeman, Montana and ski Big Sky Resort.  Off we went over a winter break.  Following the initial excitement of a roadtrip we settled into the boredom of driving 500 miles over terrain that never changed from pool table flat.

Finally, as we neared Livingston, MT we finally saw, off in the distance, what we were searching for, mountains … the pointy kind.

We checked into an inexpensive motel, and made our first discovery, Bozeman was a college/ski town with a great night life. But I digress.   The next morning we drove the 30 miles or so up to Big Sky Resort and then I discovered what a ski mountain looks like.  The top of Big Sky is Lone Peak and it is 11,166 feet high.  The vertical drop at Big Sky is 4,350 feet.  So roughly calculating, I found myself about to ski a vertical drop of  4,250 feet more than Trestle. We had definitely found a mountain, and at least in my case it was time to let the carnage begin. By the end of the day, there was only a little blood spilled, and I had survived my first day on a real ski mountain.

While out in the bars that night we made our third discovery, there was another, lesser known, ski resort in the area which was owned by the locals (sorta like the Packers I guess).  And, the locals were kind enough to direct us to it.  Day 3 we left Bozeman and drove 16 or so miles in the opposite direction of Big Sky and found Bridger Bowl Ski Resort.  The locals were right.  Bridger Bowl is a gem.  The top of the mountain is 8,800 feet.  The highest lift at that time did not go quite to the top of the mountain.  But, if you wanted to wear a locating device you could tow rope or hike to the top and ski where very few ventured.  I did not think it wise to venture to the top, thanks just the same.

The Bridger Bowl ski area includes 20% Advanced and 30% Extreme runs.  So basically, 50% of the runs were way over my head at that time.  Perfect; game on. Bridger was a blast, and for the remainder of our trip it was our mountain of choice. 

By the end of our ski adventure in Montana, I knew two things, I could ski a real mountain (ok, ok, poorly), and I loved skiing.

So, now days I ski out of Mammoth, cuz it is huge er mammoth and it is only a 5 hour drive or so from the beach.  Sweet.  I guess you can tell, Labor Day is over and the Table Conversation at our house has drifted from surfing to skiing!

Good Eating and Table Talk,

Roger

 

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Easy Langostino Pennette Pasta

Posted on September 1, 2011 by easyrecipesandstuffc

Ingredients:

14 oz Trader Joe’s frozen bag of Langostino Tails

4 Sun Dried Tomatoes – sliced into ¼” strips (from store bought jar)

1 C  Onion – diced

1 – 14 0z can Tomato Sauce

2 Tbsp fresh Basil – chopped

2 Tbsp garlic – minced

1 tsp fresh Oregano – diced

1 tsp fresh Thyme – minced

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 Tbsp butter

½ C – half and half cream

2 0z –   American Honey Whiskey

2 C – Pennette Pasta – cooked per box directions

French Bread – sliced

In the large pot you will use to make the sauce, first melt butter, add onion, sauté for 2 minutes, add sun dried tomatoes and garlic and simmer for 2 minutes.  Stir while simmering.  Add the American Honey, stir for a minute or two, and then add the tomato sauce. Bring to boil, add all the herbs and reduce to low simmer. After 10 minutes of simmering add half and half, stir and continue at low simmer.

Under cold running water thaw a 14 oz bag of Trader Joes’s pre-cooked Langostino Tails. Drain and store in fridge .  

 

 

 

 

 

Slice French Bread.

Bring a large pot of water to boil, add the Pennette Pasta. When pasta is done, drain water from pasta, and set pasta aside.

Bring the sauce to a boil and add the Langostino Tails, and then reduce to strong simmer for 5 minutes.

In each of 4 large soup bowls place a serving of pasta. Next add sauce with Langostino Tails, and top with parmesan cheese.  Add a couple slices of French Bread and get ready for a great easy meal.

  

 

 

The first in series Jack Fields and Amber Reyes adventure novel is available at all major e-book retailers.

The first in series Jack Fields and Amber Reyes adventure novel is available at all major e-book retailers.

AND STUFF 

Occasionally I get out of the kitchen bunker. 

Remote Bunker

Today I ventured out to my favorite “remote” bunker to catch some rays, and catch up on what’s new in the only cooking magazine I get anymore, Cuisine at Home.  I like this mag because the recipes are fresh, and easy to follow.  I used to get three or more cooking and wine magazines.  Some no longer exist, and I suspect the blogo-sphere may have been their undoing.   

Another thing I do quite well at the “remote” bunker is day dream.  I am a gifted day dreamer.  Always have been.  I can recall day dreaming in my third grade class, and getting into a boat load of trouble when the teacher realized my mind had left the building.  My teacher was unimpressed with my honest admission that I was day dreaming about going to Disneyland next summer.  The day dreams for that school day were promptly shut done. I would have to wait until walking home in the snow and wind to reconvene dreaming of the upcoming summer vacation to D – Land.

So, here I am reading, watching my son and his friend surf, day dreaming.

All of a sudden I remember going though the grocery line the other week, when the guy behind to me took the time and energy to proclaim, ” times must be good you are having filet mignon”.  Ironically, although I write a blog, and occasionally argue in front of a jury, I am a pretty private person.  So I quietly thanked my new checkout line buddy for his on the spot analysis, and shuffled along.    

But, while shuffling along, I began to wonder what was the total cost of the great meal I had planned?  So I did the numbers in my head.  The filet mignon cost about 24 smackers, and the fresh salad makings cost about 4 clams.  So my ‘big dog’ meal for three cost a whopping $9.00  a serving.  That did not seem too bad to me for a great home cooked meal.

So here I am at the beach reliving the moment in my day dream, when it hits me.  The other night I ordered pizza for my son and me because She Who Must Be Obeyed was out, and football practice had run late.  My son requested a cheese medium size pizza, and I got a medium pepperoni.   With tip,  we paid $28.00.  So, the insta-meal for two cost $14.00 each!

So, as it turns out, the pricey meal was the pizza and not my beloved filet mignon.  This story brings home what Easy Recipes and stuff is all about; affordable, quick, easy, family meals that anyone can make.  There will always be occassions were ordering out is necessary, but with a little planning those occasions can be few and far between.

Heck, instead of ordering that costly pizza, save some money, make a great Easy Recipe meal, and talk about your favorite day dream.

Good Eating and Table Talk,

Roger

 

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Easy Italian Sausage and Zucchini Soup

Posted on August 21, 2011 by easyrecipesandstuffc

EASY RECIPE

My easy meal idea this week is Italian Sausage and Zucchini Soup.  This quick meal  can be made using only a fry pan and large pot, so clean up is a snap. I used Hot Italian Sausage but if you want your soup a little less spicy you could use Sweet Italian Sausage.

Step by Step Recipe serves 4:

1 Qt Chicken Broth – fat free

3/4 lb Hot Italian Sausage

1 Yellow Squash – sliced into 1/4″ thick rounds

2 Zucchini – sliced into 1/4″ thick rounds

1/2 White Onion minced

1 Tbsp Fresh Basil – chopped

     

 

 

 

1 Tbsp Dried Rosemary

1 tsp dried Thyme

1/4 tsp fennel seed

2 Cloves Garlic – chopped

1 14.5 oz Can Crushed Tomatoes

1 can of water (use tomato can)

Place all above ingredients except squash and zucchini in large pot and bring to boil, then reduce to a strong simmer.

 

 

 

 

Remove skin from Italian sausage, and brown sausage in pan.  When Italian sausage is brown on all sides, use spatula to break it into bite size pieces and then continue browning. Spoon out fat grease, and then place sausage into the simmering pot.

Next add the squash and zucchini to the simmering pot and bring to boil , then reduce heat to strong simmer for 25 minutes.

 

 

 

 

1 Loaf French Bread 

Parmesan cheese

While soup is simmering slice French bread, place in large bowl for guests to use to dip in their soup.

After plating individual soup bowls, top each bowl with a small amount of parmesan cheese.

     

And there you go, you just made a fun family meal or great date night recipe.

AND STUFF

And now for something entirely different. 

Years ago after my best friend passed away, and I needed some quiet time.  So, I decided to build an RC Nitro TC3 kit car. The car came in a box with a gazillion parts in dozens of plastic bags.  I bought an Italian nitro-burning engine for the car.  With the remote control the darn thing cost almost as much as my first real car.  But it gave me about 6 weeks of quiet time to process the loss.

Many years later, I find myself with more free time than usual, and its summertime with my son out of school.  So, rather than send my son to another camp, we decided to have our own RC building camp! 

First we needed a kit.  Seems that nitro cars are out of favor now, so everything is electric.  I can attest to how hard it is to fire up a nitro.  But, once lit up it is sooo fun to hear the car scream past.  Also, the smell of burnt nitro ‘in the morning’ is kind of cool too.  But now it’s an electric hobby.

So we went to a sleepy hobby shop to check out kits.  The shop we went to did not have anything in stock.  Further, we found out that an arena truck kit without motor, battery, receiver, or transmitter would run about $250.00.

That’s when I turned, for the first time, to Ebay.  My son and I found an unopened RC TC4 arena truck kit and began bidding.  I wanted the kit so I bid significantly higher than the current bid to see who was lurking around.  And then with 2 days to go the bidding got hot and heavy.  I knew the retail price of the kit and stuck to my guns. At one point I felt kinda guilty because in my mind’s eye I could see some little kid bidding up his last dollar in nickels and dimes, only to have me up the bid again.

Well, we got the kit at a very good price, and then began looking for a motor on Ebay. 

With all we needed to start construction, we started to build the TC4.  Every afternoon, after lunch, and before lacrosse or football practice we would pull the folding table out of the garage, set it up in the driveway and start working. It was awesome to see how well my son took to following the directions, and working with his hands as he built the kit. He has really matured in the last year.

From time to time we would get stumped, and even have to take a section of newly completed work apart and rebuild it.  But we moved on. One day my oldest son came by to admire the work, and while fiddling with the front supsension it fell off.  Back to the drawing boards.  

With the encouragement of She Who Must Be Obeyed, we finished the kit, installed the motor, receiver, and battery pack and fired it up. 

Nothing but a whirring sound.

Back to the directions.  We took the rear-end apart twice with no improvement.  We needed help.  We had found a lively shop (Hobbytown USA) where we purchased the battery, receiver, and transmitter,  and took the car to them for help.  They immediatley saw what we had done wrong, and corrected it in about 5 minutes. 

The arena truck is done, and it is fast, very fast! Tomorrow we are going to fire up my Nitro, it should be very fun indeed – old school versus new school.   

So funny enough I guess I just wrote my “What I did Last Summer” report. Cliff Notes version: We had a blast.               

 

Good Eating and Table Talk,

Roger

 

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Easy Recipe for Egg Prosciutto Breakfast In Bed Sandwich

Posted on August 16, 2011 by easyrecipesandstuffc

EASY RECIPE

While trying to come up with this week’s recipe I was scanning the weather report for the beach, and as it looked like the morning could be cloudy I decided to make a Sunday breakfast in bed for She Who Must Be Obeyed. The following step by step recipe is easy to make and results in a quick great meal.

This recipe typically serves two:

2 Whole Wheat Bagels – cut in half and toasted

2 Eggs – over easy

3 oz Prosciutto

4 Sun dried Tomatoes – sliced

1/4 C Gruyere Cheese – grated (Sue thinks her serving could have had less cheese)

Assorted Fruit

Drizzle a little olive oil over the toasted bagel.

Assembly:

Place both over easy eggs on a paper plate,  add Prosciutto to each, next add grated Gruyere cheese, and top with slices of sun dried tomato.  Place in microwave oven until cheese is melted (this will also firm up the egg so do not overcook the egg).

  

 

 

 

 

 

Lift the prepared egg off the paper plate and place on the bottom half of bagel on serving plate.  And boom baby you cook like a pro.

To really do it up right, you could also prepare Bloody Marys. Here is Sue’s step by step recipe for a very good Bloody Mary: Fill highball glass with ice.  To each glass add 2 oz of jalapeno infused vodka (night before add strips of jalapeno [seeds removed] to bottle of vodka and place in freezer), add prepared Bloody Mary Mix, a drizzle of Worcestershire Sauce, 1/8 tsp prepared horseradish, 4 dashes of Tabasco sauce, and a touch of lemon pepper.   

 

AND STUFF

When I was in high school through undergraduate college, I played keyboard in a number of cover rock bands.  Those were extraordinarily fun times. We bought various vehicles to transport our gear. I recall owning a piece of two Ford Econo-line vans, a Pontiac Bonneville, and a huge Lincoln.  All the vehicles needed to be powerful enough to pull a trailer. I absolutely do not know how a bunch of teens could title and insure vehicles as a band.  Suffice it to say those were simpler times.     

We played one to two night stands at various dance halls in North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, and Western Minnesota.  We occasionally ventured into Manitoba and Saskatchowan, Canada.

Those were fun and occasionally scary times.  As one of only a handful of long haired “hippies” in the region, we were quite often welcomed at truck stop restaurants with the friendly phrase “Hi Girls” or a very short word that starts with ‘f’ and rhymes with agate.  My personal favorite taunt occured  while eating at a truck stop around 2:00 a.m. when an old drunk at the counter turned around, gazed over at me and slurred out “who do you think you are, Jesus?”  I took that as a tremendous compliment but wondered to myself if he might be on his way to meeting the real thing later that night on his drunken drive home.   

The unwanted attention of people, not quite ready for our look, paled in comparison to the hostile weather during the winter months. We always travelled with candles for light and heat, drinks (water or beer depending) and some food just in case we were trapped in a blizzard.

I remember on one occasion on the drive to perform at the NCO Club at the Minot Air Force Base it was sleeting (ice-rain and snow) heavily. On the way home the sleet had turned to snow creating very bad visibility for driving. On this occasion our drummer, accompanied by a friend, was driving his own car and leading the way in the storm. He was doing a fine job until he casually drove into the ditch and shortly thereafter the rear of a car already in the ditch. 

Fortunately no one was hurt, and at such low speed and deep snow, the cars were barely scratched. Of course we in the van were laughing our butts off at his misfortune. Then the scene turned even funnier.  Due to the black ice under the new snow, and the strong wind pushing against the drummer and his friend, they were having trouble walking to the van.  They literally could not stop on the black ice and instead slid right past the van. 

So now all of us in the warm van are in tears laughing at our drummer sliding away into the darkness and certain death.  Coming to our senses and realizing that he and his buddy could actually be in some degree of danger, but not wanting to join them, we had the idea to throw them a lifeline.  Of course we did not have any rope, so we connected and tied together extension cords (rock bands have lots of extension cords), threw the long cord out and proceeded to pull the drummer and his friend to the rear of the van. Our laughter by now was near hysterical in intensity.  For sure nothing could be funnier.

But we were wrong. 

Once we abandoned his car and renewed our slow drive through the blizzard we asked what the heck happened?  Why did it look like you just drove right into the ditch?  We then learned that our drummer had had a plan. With a straight face he told us that he had been carefully following the only set of car tracks visible on the road.  His logical, but entirely without reason, assumption was that the driver in front must have known where he was going. So, he followed the tracks very carefully, never taking his eyes off the tracks, right into the ditch and shortly thereafter right into the the trunk of a car that had driven into the ditch earlier. Nice, real nice.

What a fun night. There were many, many more fun band adventures which I will from time to time try to conjure up.

I am guessing we were all young and “stupid” once, so tell your story and have a really fun table conversation.

Good Eating and Table Talk,

Roger

 

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