Recipe of the Week!

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Sunday, after a busy weekend the hubby and I decided to eat at Panera Bread for a quick dinner.  Love it there because you can eat on your own time and it is convenient with a toddler.  I ordered broccoli cheddar soup and the Sierra Turkey sandwich.  I can never eat all of it so I brought the soup home.  As I sat eating it for lunch the next day, I thought "This can't be to hard to make".  Can honestly admit that I never made soup from scratch before! (I know kind of sad, but like I had mentioned before my cooking knowledge is not that great).  So I turned to my AllRecipes.com app on my Iphone (LOVE IT) for a great recipe and set out on my first homemade soup adventure! This is my version of the AllRecipes.com recipe, but here is a link to their version if you'd prefer to try the original Best Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Ingredients:

1 head fresh broccoli, chopped

2 large carrots, chopped

1 package of Knorr Vegetable Recipe Mix 

3 1/2 cups water 

3/4 cups whole milk

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions: 

1. In medium sized stock pot, over medium heat, combine soup mix and water stirring constantly until well mixed. 

2. Add broccoli florets and carrots, partially cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes stirring often.  

3. Once vegetables are tender, place soup in a food processor or blender and puree.  Once blended return soup mixture to stock pot. 

4. Add milk and stir. 

5. Add cheese to soup mixture keeping 1/2 cup set aside.  Stir soup until cheese is melted and then sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup on top of individual dishes.  

Tips: I added some extra cheese to it.  Also add water or milk as needed to desired consistency.  Also needed to add a little salt to taste.  

Tonight we had this soup with a yummy filet! Strange combination, but both were delicious! Baby girl even enjoyed them! 

You can learn a lot in 1 day!

Woke up this morning in some sort of "funk".  Felt like I hadn't slept a wink last night and didn't really have any specific plans for the day which always leads to lack of motivation for me! Made it through a somewhat trying day (with some help from Starbucks) and looking back am realizing everything I learned in what seemed like an uneventful day.  We'll start from the beginning.

1. Burg Restorations are just as fabulous as I said they were in a previous post! They came to paint the basement after tearing out the wall to fix our pipes.  Because they weren't sure they could color match the paint close enough, they painted our WHOLE basement for us! And it looks AMAZING!

2. Your children hear and will repeat EVERYTHING you say.  As the "paintman" arrives our dogs of course bark their heads off (as they do at everything that moves outside). And baby girl of course starts yelling "Knock it off" in the same exact tone I do when I yell at the dogs.  And although it was pretty darn funny, I have learned to be careful with what I say around the little sponge!

3. When you wake up in a "funk", blueberries and Clifford Crunch cereal seems like an amazing breakfast!

4. Spic and Span cleaner is not the best cleaning product for hardwood floors! I am now left with shiny, but sticky floors!

5. Google + is another social networking site that I really didn't need in my life, but somehow got sucked into!!!

6. A Tennis store is a great place to entertain a toddler for an hour! Baby girl had a blast running around and seeing all the "pretty dresses" aka tennis skirts.  And the entertainment even included seeing family and friends for a quick visit! (Fromuth- Reading, PA)

7. To go along with lesson #6 I also learned (well not really cause I sort of already knew this, but just wasn't listening to the instinct today) that taking a tired toddler to a tennis store during nap time is not the best idea.  She acted tired around 11:30, tried to get her to nap for about an hour without any luck. Decided to feed her lunch and jump in the car to meet up with my Mom for a little.  Of course she fell asleep within the first 5 minutes of the 20 minute drive.  And of course when we got to the tennis store the family wanted to see her so I woke her up.  I know most of you are thinking what is wrong with you, and I was thinking the same thing, but hoped she would maybe just fall asleep again on the way home.  HAHA, wishful thinking. She stayed awake of course, so I decided it was still early enough to try and get her down for a nap when we got home.  (Moms you probably know how this one goes) Now she was beyond tired and so cranky and would not fall asleep again.  As it was almost dinner time by this point I decided to keep her up and get started on dinner.  But she was of course miserable the rest of the evening!

8. Speaking of dinner time, the 8th thing I learned was that Broccoli cheddar soup is super easy to make! (see recipe in later post)

9. And onto bedtime....Learned a lot at bedtime...Having Daddy try to put baby girl to sleep on a night that she is extremely exhausted is probably not the best idea and led to everyone being a little stressed out.

10. I was then reminded of how much I love rocking my baby girl to sleep and having her "snuggle Mommy's shoulder" that I was "secretly" happy that she wouldn't go to sleep for Daddy.  :)

It is amazing what life teaches you throughout the day and you don't realize how much you have learned, some silly things, but also some really important lessons.  Can't wait to see what "lessons" tomorrow holds!