Tortilla Soup

A day or so after Christmas we made a trip to California to visit with relatives we had not yet seen during the holidays. While we adore leftovers this time of year (who doesn't, right?) it was really nice to find out what was on the menu at my sister's house the first night we were there. You got it......tortilla soup. Spicy, festive, and different. *Little note here....if you haven't seen the movie by the same name, "Tortilla Soup" you may want to watch it, if only for the gorgeous food preparation scenes....really....so much fun to watch.

Jane always sets a beautiful table.....spicy and festive, just like the soup.

You garnish the meal with sliced avocados, grated cheese, and sour cream. For variety you can try the "blue" tortilla chips along with your favorite regular ones.

So here's the recipe........Enjoy.......we did!

Tortilla Soup

2 fresh tomatoes chopped ( or 1 can of tomatoes), 2 8oz cans of Tomato sauce, 2 gloves minced garlic, 4 cups water, 2 Tbl sugar, 3 tsp chili powder, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp cumin, 1 4oz can of chopped green chilies, 2 cups of chopped cooked chicken,

Tortilla Chips, Grated Cheese,

Sour cream and avocado for garnish

Bring all ingredients except chicken, chips and cheese to boil in a large pot. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Add chicken and simmer an additional 10-15 minutes. (This can also be made in a crock pot as shown in the pictures)

Ladle into bowls and top with chips, cheese, etc.

My first chance to say "Happy New Year!" to you all,

The Mom Song with Lyrics

This is so hilarious and 100% accurate! I posted this on my Facebook page this morning and thought I'd share it with my Blog followers too.

Enjoy!.....and Happy Mother's Day!

Bacon Quiche Tarts on Easter Morning

Here's a scrumptious little recipe that I got from my cousin Debbie. They're little quiches made in a muffin tin.....and as an added bonus they can be made ahead of time, reheated, and they taste just as wonderful! I think they're particularly good for Holiday breakfasts or brunch buffets. That's why ever since I got this from her I've been making them for our Easter morning breakfast. Just serve with a quick fruit salad or a pretty little dish of melon cubes. Be sure to bake plenty because, believe me...... no one is going to be satisfied with just one.

I don't think there's anything more refreshing on a warm Spring or Summer morning than to serve glasses of iced water with lemon and orange wedges!

Speckled eggs on the table, all ready for hiding later in the afternoon. If you'd like to know how to make these you can find the directions here on the Southern Living website.

Debbie's Bacon Quiche Tarts

Ingredients

1 8 oz. package cream cheese

5 tsp milk

2 large eggs

1/2 cup of shredded cheese

2 Tbsp chopped green pepper

1 Tbsp chopped onion

2 tubes refrigerated crescent rolls

(there are 8 in each tube, you will have 4 left over for other purposes)

6 strips of bacon, cooked and crumbled and divided evenly into two parts

*Beat cream cheese and milk until smooth. Add eggs, cheese, green pepper, onion and mix well. Separate dough and mold into greased muffin cups. Sprinkle half of bacon crumbles evenly into each cup then pour egg mixture over the bacon. Top with remaining bacon. Bake at 375 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until knife comes out clean. Serve warm. Makes 1 dozen.

* Filling and bacon crumbles can be made ahead of time and kept refrigerated overnight.....then in the morning all you have to do is mold the dough into the muffin cups, fill, and bake.

ENJOY!

Be sure to check these out.......

Today I'm linking with Foodie Friday, Food on Friday, Friday Feasts,

Follow me Friday , Friday's Favorite , Friday Follow

and Tablescape Thursday

Easter Wordless Wednesday

May your Easter be filled with Joy

Today I'm linked with Wordless Wednesday, Five Minutes for Mom and Extraordinary Mothers . Be sure to drop by these sites to enjoy more Wordless Wednesday entries.

Vintage Easter Party

This is simply Mr. and Mrs. Rabbit out for a Saturday stroll. Except, I imagine, this isn't just an ordinary Saturday......this is on a Saturday before Easter. They've been gathering goodies for their Easter dinner. Mrs. Rabbit has not been able to resist picking lovely yellow flowers for the table, while her husband has loaded up his basket with big fat juicy carrots. As they walk they talk casually, intimately, comfortably, as only a husband and wife can. Their hearts are full as they think about their home, their large rambunctious family, the wondrous Spring they're surrounded by, and the wonderful gift the entire world has been given.
He is Risen!

Happy Eastertime

Today I'm joining Joan for the Vintage Easter Party @ Anything Goes Here. Be sure to drop by and join in the fun!

Easter Bunny Cake

Back in the 80's I picked up this cookbook at a used book sale. It was first published in 1966 and it turned out to have so many great ideas in it. I've used it over and over through the years. The nice thing about this is that while all of these cakes are made with mixes, they can easily be adapted to use with homemade cakes too. Just use your own favorite recipes. I've seen copies several times over the years and they're well worth picking up if you run across one.

I've made this Bunny cake for so many Easter dinners. It's so simple to make and turns out looking great AND tasting great every time. Guaranteed.

Easter Bunny Cake

Bake any layer Betty Crocker layer cake mix in two round layer pans (8 or 9 1/2 inch) as directed on the box. Or use your own favorite recipe. Cool. Cut one layer in half. Put both halves together with a prepared frosting (either a can of Betty Crocker White or Cream Cheese Frosting.........or again, use your own recipe if you like.) Stand cake upright on cut edge.

With a sharp knife cut a notch about a third of the way around the semicircle, forming the rabbits head. Save cutout piece for the tail. secure in place with a wooden pick. Frost the entire rabbit with remaining frosting. Sprinkle generously with shredded coconut.

Make ears of white paper; color inside pink with a crayon or colored pencil. Use pink jelly beans or gumdrops for eyes and nose. Form an attractive nest around the bunny with tinted green coconut ( see instructions below) and place a few Easter Eggs (jelly beans) around him.

Freeze the other layer for later use, or make another bunny.......color the inside of his ears blue and you'll have a " Mr. and Mrs." for your Easter dinner table.

Tinted Coconut:

Place one cup of coconut in a a jar or plastic bag. Mix 1 or 2 drops of food coloring with 1 teaspoon of water. Add to coconut. Screw on lid or fold close bag and shake until coconut is uniformly colored.

Here's a photo of 2 year-old granddaughter Kylie the first year she discovered the bunny.

Enjoy!

Today I'm linking with these great sites....Just click on the names for the link and be sure to check out their cute buttons in my sidebar!

Friday Follow

Foodie Friday

Friday Feasts

Friday Food

Vintage Recipe Thursday

Inspired on Friday

I'm Lovin' It Fridays

Show and Tell Friday

Funky Junks Saturday Nite Special

Strut Your Stuff Easter/Spring

Making the World Cuter Monday

Tasty Tuesday

Valentine's Day Past.......Romance, Sleeping In, and Leftover Cheesecake

Valentine's Day around here has been rather quiet and uneventful......and that's just the way we wanted it.

You see we had a party here last night.

We moved most of the furniture out and set a table for fourteen in front of the fireplace. With a little background music by Michael Buble' and Rod Stewart it was all very romantic. Before dinner was over every couple had shared the story of their first date. Funny, sweet, romantic.....all at the same time. 

A little after-dinner dancing, pictures to prove what talented friends we have, and custom cds made for each couple to take home with them........all made it a special night to remember. *

It's so much fun to share an evening with good friends!

Needless to say, however, it was a late evening. By the time we were finished with cleanup it was very very late......though I do believe we looked a little more cheerful than this couple. After all, romance was still in the air even at 3 am!

Then all too soon the SUN was up.........

But WE weren't!   

                                                                                    
Gotta admit we did sleep in this morning........ till almost eleven o'clock to be exact. Can't remember when we last did that! But it was so lovely and it felt so good. No breakfast. Just a little cheesecake and a bottle of Martinelli sparkling cider (left over from the party) for our lunch. Yes, that was what we had for lunch.

Consequently, it is now eleven o'clock PM and neither one of us is sleepy. We're on our way to bed though. Jim is getting some popcorn popped right now as I speak. (okay, I'll admit there hasn't been a lot of good nutrition going on around here today) Anyway, we have our choice of three movies to watch before we fall asleep. We've seen all three repeatedly and we don't mind watching either of them again. So I guess we'll decide when we crawl into bed, all warm and toasty with our bowls of popcorn.

So on this Valentine evening will it be.........

Music and Lyrics with Huge Grant and Drew Barrymore.........

The Wedding Date with Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney...... .....or.....

The Holiday with Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Jack Black? Good night......hope you had a lovely Valentines Day too.

*For an even longer description of the party you can visit my original post here

Merry Christmas!

A Rare Summer Picnic

Since this week Jim and I will be busy celebrating our August 14th Wedding Anniversary, I will be AWOL from my computer the rest of the week. That being the case, I am linking to several other sites for this post and they are listed at the bottom.......please be sure to check them out! :)

As many of you know I'm hooked on Scrapbooking.............

I've gotten several e-mails lately asking when I was going to post more of my scrapbook pages so I've decided to feature pages from a spur-of-the-moment picnic we had a short while back. Here in the desert there are virtually no picnics after Memorial Day or then again before Labor Day, primarily because of the heat. That's my world. Now picnics and BBQ's around backyard pools are an entirely different story......here in Phoenix people live in their pools all summer. No, the kind of picnics I'm talking about are the" picnics- in- the- park" type of meal. Some years you can't even be sure it will still be cool enough by Memorial Day. Fortunately, in this particular year it was still relatively cool, and when we realized this we headed to Cortez Park at the last minute with a few friends.

As I've said before I now do digital scrapbooking exclusively. While I loved doing it the paper and paste way I found that with the volume of photos I want to scrap it was so time consuming that I would never stay caught up. I scrap chronologically with a scrapbook for every year. I keep each page fairly simple by arranging the photos with whatever clipart strikes my fancy at the time. I don't use this many "talk bubbles" every time but in this particular layout I wanted to use humorous conversation to move the story along.

We had a lot of fun with this insanely large frisby. None of us were used to doing this anymore so it was quite comical in itself.......a fact that was not lost on our teenagers!

You see? Teenagers.....gotta love 'em.

I create the layouts using Photo Shop, print each one out on my regular printer as an 8x8

page, then add to my 8 x 8 sized scrapbook. I also love the fact that I can make CDs of each years albums and keep them in a safe place as a back up "just in case".

The end of a long day......time for a nice siesta under the trees.

I'm leaving you today with a recipe that I took to that impromptu picnic that day...... Janie's Baked Beans. Now these beans are quick,easy, and definitely not baked. They can be prepared on top of the stove or in an electric skillet with not much effort. You can serve them warm, but I much prefer them cold. It's a good idea if you're taking them somewhere other than your own backyard that you chill them first, put in a plastic container and pack in your ice chest. These go so well with any kind of outdoor meal. Yummy and foolproof.

Janie's Quick Baked Beans

I call them this because this started out as

my baby sister's recipe a long time ago....

then I took it over :)

Ingredients:

4 slices bacon, diced

1 chopped onion

1/2 bell pepper, diced

I can pork and beans (31 oz)

3 Tbs dark mollasses

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tsp prepared mustard

1/2 tsp tabasco

1/3 cup Ketchup

2 Tbsp Worcester Sauce

In electric skillet or large frying pan saute first 3 ingredients until they are tender. Mix other ingredients in, cooking over low heat. Simmer until well seasoned. Serves 6.........but I often double, triple, or even quadruple this recipe for a large crowd. It is very forgiving......you can experiment with each of the ingredients until you get it just the way you like it.

Enjoy!

@ Beauty & Bedlam @The Gypsy's Corner @Blessed with Grace

@ That's My World

@ A Southern Daydreamer

@ Designs by Gollum @ Ann Kroeker @ Momtrends @Vanderbilt Wife

And finally check out Hooked on Fridays @ http://hookedonhouses.net/