Broccoli Cheddar Soup in a Bread Bowl

In our present lack of Panera, I've been settling for Atlanta Bread Company. As a Georgia native, I want to have allegiances to ABC, but it just doesn't stack up to Panera, particularly in their lack of mac and cheese and the fact that they don't have broccoli cheddar soup every day. I can't handle the anxiety and potential disappointment of going to a restaurant and not knowing if they're going to have what I want. But, if this is my biggest problem, I consider myself very lucky. I have been craving broccoli cheddar soup AND a bread bowl, and I have a long workout planned for tomorrow so I thought I'd give this a whirl. It also helped that I only had to buy one ingredient.

For the bread bowl:

2 1/2 cups warm water

2 tbsp yeast

3 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp white vinegar

1 tbsp salt

1/3 cup olive oil

6 cups flour

Mix the water, yeast, sugar, and vinegar and let it sit for about 5 minutes, or until it's bubbly. Add the salt and olive oil. Add one cup of flour at a time. I can usually mix 3 cups of flour with a fork before I have to start kneading it by hand. Knead the entire mixture for about 5 minutes, adding a little olive oil at a time if needed. Put the dough into a bowl, cover it with damp towel, and let it sit for half an hour. 

Divide the dough into six balls (more or less depending on how big you want your bread bowls) and put them on a greased baking sheet. Bake them at 375 for about 25 minutes. When they're done, cut a circle out of the top and scoop out it for the bowl. 

For the soup:

2 cups water
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1 bag 16-oz broccoli florets
2 cups mild cheddar cheese, shredded
1 1/2 cups fat free half & half
3 tbsp cornstarch
salt to taste

Bring the water and bouillon cubes to a boil and stir to combine. Heat the broccoli and 3/4 cup of water in the microwave for 6 minutes. Turn the temperature to low heat. Add about 1/4 of the broccoli to the broth and mash it with a potato masher. Add the rest of the broccoli (with the water), the cheese, and the half & half. Stir until the cheese melts. I added the cornstarch to thicken it up a bit since the fat free half & half isn't as thick as regular. Mix in a bit of salt too and let it simmer on low heat for a few minutes.

Ladle it into that hunk of carbs and enjoy!

Crock Pot Chicken Parmesan

Luke is on duty tonight, so I wanted to surprise him with his favorite dinner. Delivering dinner to the Marine barracks felt very reminiscent of Bancroft Hall duty nights. That time really seems like it was so long ago even though it was less than 2 years ago.

I don't normally make this in the crock pot, but I thought I'd give it a try to see how it turned out. Unfortunately, it's one of those annoying recipes that cooks for either 6 hours on low (not a full workday...) or 3 hours on high. But it turned out great, so I think I will make it this way again.

Sauce:
2 cans stewed tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
4 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup white wine or white cooking wine
1/2 large zucchini, diced
1 lb fresh mushrooms, diced

Chicken:
2 lbs chicken breast
1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/4 cup fresh Parmesan cheese, shredded
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 egg, beaten
t tbsp olive oil
sliced mozzarella cheese

Also some spaghetti

For the sauce, blend all ingredients except for the zucchini and mushrooms. I used a blender because I didn't bring my food processor for hotel living life, and it worked fine, but a food processor would probably be better. Stir in the zucchini and mushrooms and set aside.

Coat the bottom of the crock pot with olive oil. In one shallow dish, beat the egg. In another shallow dish, combine the bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Coat the chicken in egg first, and then coat it in the bread crumbs. Put the chicken in the crock pot. Top the chicken with sliced mozzarella. Pour the sauce over the chicken and cook it on low for 6 hours or high for 3 hours. Serve it on top of spaghetti.

Hello, Fiber! Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I spent Sunday-Friday of last week in Lynchburg, Virginia for a week-long "intensive" class, and it definitely lived up to the name. I spent about 14 hours per day either in class or doing work for the class, so needless to say, I am exhausted. I also got a great reminder of how amazing Fall is on the east coast. I got to see some beautiful mountains with awesome colors and so much foliage! I have almost forgotten about foliage here in Fort Sill where trees are sparse, and it's so windy and dry that even if the trees had dead leaves, they would have blown away long ago. I am a true lover of all Fall things, and pumpkin tops the list for sure. When we were living in Quantico, I made about 6 batches of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, so I figured the only way to make these better would be to add pumpkin. Also, I am an old lady who loves meeting my daily fiber intake, and the pumpkin and oatmeal in these definitely contribute to that goal : )

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup (yikes, I know) butter, melted
1 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup pureed pumpkin
2 cups oats
1 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. In a large bowl, whisk together butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Add vanilla and egg to wet ingredients. Whisk pumpkin into wet ingredients. Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Add the oats 1/2 cup at a time. Lastly, mix in the chocolate chips. Bake these at 350 for 14-15 minutes.

I made one large pan (about 15 cookies) and had enough dough left over to probably make about 30 more cookies. I should also mention this tastes great as cookie dough...

Pumpkin Monkey Bread

For a couple of weeks, I have been really jealous of my friends who were posting on Facebook and tweeting about wearing boots and scarves and sipping pumpkin spice lattes because Fall continued to escape us here in Fort Sill. Last week, the temperatures were still in the 80s. That is not Fall. Then suddenly, it was 50 degrees for no explainable reason, and though I know it's going to be back in the 80s next week, I am embracing these 5 days of 40-50 degree weather and diving in head first to a new pumpkin recipe.

I made this pumpkin monkey bread for Sunday school this week. It's amazing how some lessons and sermons seem like they're so specifically meant for me. We've been in 1 Peter for a few weeks now, and today were talking about how husbands and wives should relate to one another. If I'm being completely honest, Fort Sill has not been great for me. We are fine, but I've just really felt like I was in a funk since we got here. I am frustrated with the licensing process (5-6 weeks for application review?? try 9 weeks and still going...) and feeling like I'm just not contributing a lot. This week at Sunday school, I was really struck with some ways I could be focusing my attention rather than desperately trying to get where I think I should be in my career. We talked about the ways that husbands and wives can pray for each other in order to encourage growth, and I'll definitely be spending some extra time in prayer to do this.

So this is what I made. It was pretty time consuming. I made it last night because I didn't want to get up at 5 am to make this before heading to church.

For the dough:
3 1/4 cup flour, plus some extra for kneading
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
2 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 cup warm milk
1/4 cup warm water
1 can pumpkin
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

For the coating:
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 tsp cinnamon
3/4 stick butter, melted

In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and sugar. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, milk, water, pumpkin, and yeast. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the pumpkin mixture into it, combining it with a wooden spoon.

After it's well combined, knead it on a floured surface for about 8 minutes. Spray a clean bowl with non-stick spray, put the dough in, and cover it to rise for an hour.

After the dough has risen for an hour, tear it into bite-size pieces. Melt the butter for the coating in a small bowl, and in another small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon. When I tore the dough into pieces, it was still really sticky, so floured hands are helpful. Roll the dough in the butter and then roll it in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Place it in a baking dish that has been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Typically, I'd make this in a bundt pan, but since I didn't bring one of those to Oklahoma, I made it in a cake pan. Tastes the same.  I had some extra cinnamon/sugar, so I sprinkled it on top. You can never  have too much cinnamon and sugar. After all the pieces have been coated and placed in the pan, cover it and let it rise for another hour. About 30 minutes into this hour, turn the oven on to 350 degrees, and let the pan sit on top of the oven to finish rising another half hour. This will help with the tenderness of the dough.

After it has risen for an hour, bake it at 350 for about 30 minutes. Let it sit for about 30 minutes before turning it onto a serving dish. So delicious!

Luke's Birthday Cake Meltdown

Today is my wonderful husband's 24th birthday! I wanted to make him some special birthday treats, but our lack of kitchen supplies left me grasping for straws. I knew I couldn't beat the chocolate chip peanut  butter pancakes and chocolate chip peanut butter cookie cake from last year, but I thought I had a great idea to make him an ice cream cake, being as it is still in the 80s here at Fort Sill. I've made this a few times before with no problems, but I should have realized I made it before in normal kitchens with functioning appliances, i.e. freezers that actually freeze. So I made the delicious fudgy filling and got the ice cream sandwiches out only to find that despite being in our freezer for over 24 hours, they were melted. Not completely liquid melted, but way too soft to spread or stack or anything that was necessary. I had a little meltdown that ending in shouts about me hating living in a hotel and hating Fort Sill. Not my proudest moment. Even on his birthday, my husband loved me so well by salvaging the ice cream sandwiches and taping our freezer shut so they could be fit for use later today. Such a good man. So, I was finally able to make him a birthday cake, and it turned out as best as could be expected.

Here's the recipe, though I had to make a few changes due to hotel living circumstances.

1 cup hot fudge ice cream topping, warmed
1 cup sugar free cool whip
 1 package chocolate pudding
2 "rows" of Oreos, crushed (about 1 cup crushed)
12 ice cream sandwiches (we only had 8)
2 cups sugar free cool whip

In a bowl, combine hot fudge, 1 cup cool whip, and pudding. Whisk it until all of the pudding is incorporated. Add the crushed Oreos. Depending on the thickness of the hot fudge topping, you might need to add a little milk to make it easier to spread.

this stuff is great to eat straight from the bowl too...

On aluminum foil, place 6 ice cream sandwiches side by side. Top with fudge mixture. Place 6 more ice cream sandwiches on top, and cover this with fudge too.

Spread 2 cups cool whip over the whole thing.


Loosely fold foil around the cake so that it's not touching the cake. Put it in the freezer for about 4 hours. You'll need a heavy knife to cut it after it freezers thoroughly.

Garlic Bread Meatballs

We had a potluck with our Sunday school class tonight. It was great to get to know some of the people in our class better. All of them have a lot more military life experience, so it was good to hear about that too. Of the 5 couples represented, 2 of the men were deployed, so that was also eye-opening. I know deployment is coming, but for some reason, that made it more real. It was also a great reminder to take advantage of this time we have and enjoy each other.

I took some crock pot tortellini and wanted to try out an easy appetizer recipe I saw in a magazine a while ago. I couldn't remember it exactly, but it turned out great, it was super easy, and it was a big hit. It was also safe for a potluck since it was really simple.

2 cans of Pillsbury reduced fat flaky layers biscuits
30-40 frozen, fully cooked meatballs, thawed (or you could be amazing and make them yourself)
Italian seasoning
Garlic powder
Parmesan cheese
Mozzarella cheese

Pull apart the biscuits along the layers into halves or thirds. Some of the biscuits were too hard to pull into thirds, so halves worked fine. Sprinkle a little mozzarella on the biscuit and then wrap a meatball in the biscuit. Place it seam down into a baking dish. Sprinkle all of the balls with the amount of garlic powder, Italian seasoning, and parmesan that you want. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. Take them out and sprinkle a little more shredded mozzarella on top and put them back in the oven for a minute or so.

the flaky layers

Crock Pot Tortellini

Over the 96 this past weekend, Luke and I went to Frisco, TX to see a Rough Riders game. This was absolutely the nicest AA stadium I have ever seen. It looked like a horse track reproduced with a MLB stadium. We spent the next day exploring Dallas and saw the grassy knoll. Mostly it was miserably hot, but we had a good time anyway. On the drive home, I was certain I had picked up some illness and immediately assumed it was West Nile Virus considering Dallas is the breeding ground. Turns out I got a nasty spider bite, and now I'm just praying I don't end up with a rotten hole in my arm. So, with being sick over the end of the weekend, a crock pot recipe was ideal. No work, forget about it, pass out on the couch to Dance Moms. This smelled really good cooking all day, too.

2 cans tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes with garlic, drained
1 can crushed tomatoes with juices
1/2 lb mushrooms, diced
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 lb ground beef or Italian sausage, browned
16 oz tortellini
1 cup shredded mozzarella

Mix everything except for the tortellini and mozzarella in the crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours. Mix in tortellini and mozzarella and let it cook until the tortellini is tender - around 15 minutes. Yum, easy, literally no work, and this was so delicious. And if the 16 oz of tortellini wasn't a clue, it makes a ton. Leftovers are my dream come true while living in a hotel...