The other morning I held a cookbook out the car window to Ian as he stood there to kiss me goodbye and asked him if he would make Chicken Tortilla Soup in a slow cooker for our dinner. He asked which ingredients we had.
"We've got cumin, salt, chili powder and minced garlic."
He picked me up at lunch, we ate, and then stopped at the grocery store for the rest of the ingredients. The total was $25.32. The soup made six servings, so about $4.22 a bowl. Is that high? I'm trying to decide. Do I pay $4.25 for a bowl of soup when I dine out?
The cookbook was Mary Engelbreit's Fan Fare Cookbook: 120 Slow Cooker Recipe Favorites. Certainly, this is a must have for the Engelbreit fan. Gift-giving holidays are on the horizon. Its covers are hard-back with a metal, spiral spine perfect for cooking because the book lies flat. The recipes ranged from chilis to soups & stews to beef dishes to poultry dishes, pork dishes, side dishes, dips & sauces, and finally, desserts.
Engelbreit admits that she's no cook. However, she loves good food and her family, friends, and fans helped her out by sharing their favorite slow cooker recipes for this book. There are Italian inspired dishes, German-inspired dishes, Mexican-inspired dishes, but the bulk of recipes are American standards like pot roast, beef stew, chicken noodle soup, etc.
I chose the Chicken Tortilla Soup, shared by Sam Guinn, because it's a common soup in restaurants in these parts and I hoped it would be similar to one of those. I order that a lot. Sometimes broccoli cheddar. I know, uninspiring. But there are few choices in this land of chain restaurants.
Our CTS came out a bit spicier than I like and we couldn't determine whether to blame the can of diced green chiles or that we substituted medium diced tomatoes rather than mild diced tomatoes as the instructions called for. Ian said he'd make/eat the soup again, even though it isn't his favorite. And I would too. In fact, I'll probably warm up a cup for dinner tonight.
Admittedly, the dips disturbed me. Just the idea of a dip in a crock pot puts me off somehow. Yet, the side dishes were appealing: corn puddin, sweet potato puff, and two versions of mac n cheese. Okay, the desserts disturbed me, too: chocolate cake, lemon cake, carrot cake. Wrapping my mind around using the slow cooker challenges my philosophy of cooking.
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