Oxtail Stew in the Crockpot

Saute some onions in butter.  After a while, add the oxtail and some stew meat, and brown the meat on all sides for a few minutes.

Put into the crockpot with:
Carrots
Celery
Potatoes
6 oz. of tomato paste
broth
thyme
salt
pepper

Let the crockpot rip for 8 hours on low!

First time cooking with oxtail, it was delicious!

Scooter

Turkey Cranberry Sweet Potato Stew

As promised in January (of last year), here is a recipe involving cranberries.  Basic idea taken from here.

Defrost:
A bag of cranberries.
A thing of cooked turkey.

In a stock pot:
Saute up some onion, garlic, and celery.  Add salt, pepper, and ginger.  Add chopped sweet potatoes and a splash of honey vinegar.  Add a bunch of chicken stock.  Bring to a boil, let it simmer for 15 minutes.  Add the cranberries and turkey, bring to a boil, let it simmer for another 15 minutes.

Pretty good - interesting combination of the sweet potatoes and the tart cranberries.

Scooter

Oh yeah - I also put in a couple crumbled strips of bacon.

Soup - Veggies, Beef, Coconut Milk

This soup was inspired by:
The ingredients in the fridge.
A hot pot restaurant in California that you cooked thinly-sliced meat in a pot of hot soup in front of you.
Thinly sliced beef I had taken out of my freezer.
A soup recipe from a friend of TG.

Saute in oil (and add as completed during the chopping process):
a couple onions
a hunk of ginger
a small handful of peeled garlic
a big couple handfuls of carrots
a small sweet potato, peeled and diced
a couple stalks of celery
a red bell pepper

After it has sauteed for a bit (5 min. after adding the bell pepper), add some amount of broth, covering the veggies by about two inches.  (I used the Better-Than-Bouillon beef stuff.  Might not be strictly paleo, but it is gluten-free.)  Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Bring it back to a boil - add the thinly sliced beef pieces.  Reduce heat, cover, simmer for 10 minutes.

Add a can of coconut milk, wait 'til warmed through, serve.

All in all, more delicious than I thought it would be considering the lack of spices in there.  I recommend it.  I also recommend cutting the thin slices of beef into even smaller pieces, or in lieu of that, using a spork to eat the soup - the beef pieces were a little difficult to get onto the spoon and into the mouth.

Scooter

Chicken Chile Soup

Based on the Chicken Chili Soup at Everyday Paleo.

Saute a couple of onions and some garlic in olive oil infused with cilantro and onion.
Add a couple cups of diced carrots.
After a little while
Add 4 cans green chiles (diced)
Some cumin, black pepper
Some chicken broth and water
Bring to a boil, simmer until the carrots are tender-ish
Add a rotisserie chicken, shredded
Cook for a little while longer.

Eat.

Beef Bone Broth and then Onion Soup

I made the Bone Broth from Balanced Bites:

A package of frozen soup bones (didn't bother to de-frost), a splash of apple cider vinegar, a few grinds of sea salt, and a whole handful of smashed garlic cloves.  Put in a crock-pot on low for 24 hours.  Strain into a bowl, let it cool, and skim the fat layer off the top.

Later the next day:
Take some of the onions from the crockpot onions in Lemon Saffron Chicken, and some of the broth, heat up on the stove and let simmer for 20 minutes.  It's a kind of French Onion Soup, without the cheese and bread.  So, I guess that just makes it plain, old, delicious Onion Soup.

Scooter

Garlic Meatball Soup

This recipe was a conglomeration of what sounded good, the BEST Garlic Soup recipe EVER that I got out of Patricia Cornwell's Food to Die For (this stuff is magic if you are getting sick) and a combo of an Italian Wedding Soup that looked really good on CFSCC presents: Eat This blog.

Heat some olive oil in a soup pot.
Add the following as you get done chopping them:
Onion
Thumb size piece of ginger (completely unnecessary, but it was about to go bad so I thought I'd use it)
Somewhere between 10 and 30 cloves of garlic, depending on your preference, smashed with the side of a knife, peels removed.  (You can smash with the peels on, and pick them out easily apres-smash.)
Bag of baby carrots.  They don't need to be chopped too fine.
Saute all this for 10 minutes or so.
Add some italian spices
Approximately 6 cups of chicken broth and water
Bring to a boil, let simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Blend the soup, using an immersion blender.
Take 1 lb. ground beef, form it into small chunks with your hands, and add to the soup.  Let it go on a low boil for about 15 minutes, then add some big handfuls of spinach.  Simmer until wilted.

Sooooo good.  If you like garlic.  And all the other ingredients.

Vampires beware!

Garlic Beef Stew - Crockpot

This is another one out of Sarah Fragoso's Everyday Paleo.

Combine and stir together in a crockpot:
3 onions (sliced), 1-2 lbs stew meat, a head of garlic (chopped), some chicken broth, some ground salt and pepper, and a few shakes of marjoram.

Then halve a butternut squash, scoop out seeds, and place skin side up on top of everything else.

Cook on low for 8 hours.

Simple, good, easy but could use either more or less spices.  (I suspect just salt and pepper would have been fine.)  I'd never cooked a squash in the crockpot before, and it worked well.  Next time I might also throw in a bag of baby carrots. 

Scooter

Chicken Cauliflower Soup

Time for.....more soup!  Based off of this one on Orie Shafer's Eat Move Thrive blog.

Saute two onions and a handful of baby carrots in olive oil.  For like 10 minutes.
Add shakes of: cumin, pepper, turmeric, coriander, chili pepper, and cayenne pepper.
Add a chopped bell pepper.  Saute for a few more minutes.
Add chicken broth/water.  I think I added a total of around 8 cups of liquid.
Turn up heat, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer.
Add a head of chopped up cauliflower.
After 10-15 minutes or so, add some pre-cooked chicken.
After another 5 minutes, add a bunch of spinach.
When everything has been heated through, enjoy!

Basic but good.  Got to use the chicken stock I just made!

Sweet Potato, Kale, and Sausage Soup. This stuff is GOOD.

TG and I decided it was time to kick back with some scotch and make something with kale in it.  Being on a soup kick lately, this is what we went with, based on this recipe at joythbaker's blog.

Dice an onion (or two), saute in olive oil in a large soup pot
Finely chop ginger and garlic, to taste.  Our test runs to quite a bit of both.
Add the above to the soup pot, along with some turmeric (guessing around a teaspoon) and a pinch of red pepper flakes.  Stir and cook for a couple minutes.
Add two peeled and chopped medium sweet potatoes, give them a good stir to get coated in spices and such. 
Add 2 quarts chicken broth.
Turn up the heat to bring it to a simmer.
Add a bunch of kale and half a bunch of collard greens, leaves torn and stalks removed.
Add a package of pre-cooked sausage.  (We used mild italian chicken sausages.)
Let it simmer for like 20 minutes or so, until the sweet potatoes are cooked through.  We actually let it boil away for like 30 b/c we get careless sometimes.
Add a can of coconut milk, let it heat through.
Salt and pepper, to taste.

Soooooo good.
Scooter and TG

Beef and Bok Choy Soup

After plowing through leftovers all week, I finally made something new.  Using mostly the vegetables that had been in my fridge the longest.
Add the following to a soup pot as you're preparing them:
Sesame oil.
Medium heat.
Chopped onion.
Minced ginger.  After two-three minutes add
Gound beef.  When browned add
Handful of chopped carrots.
1 large chopped and peeled parsnip.
3/4 head chopped cauliflower.
Chicken broth and water to cover, plus a little bit.
A bunch of baby bok choy.  They are about 2 inches long.  I rinsed these and just cut off the bottom of the stalk and threw them in like that.
Some salt, pepper, and dried garlic.  (Horror of horrors - I am out of fresh!  Something is not right in the universe.)
Turn up the heat, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 25 minutes.

So, if you photograph a steaming bowl of soup from directly above it, your camera lens will fog up. 

Good soup - simple tasting, easy on the spice level, very warm and filling.

Scooter

Fast Chicken Soup

Usually soups for me are somewhat protracted affairs.....a bunch of ingredients and chopping, simmering for many minutes, etc.  Didn't have the time or patience for that today.  Super fast soup:

Heat olive oil in a pot on med.  Chop an onion and a few cloves of garlic.  Saute in the olive oil for like 5-7 minutes.  Add a can of diced tomatoes, a can of chicken (Costco-sized), broth or water to cover, and some italian spices (like basil, oregano, marjoram, sage, or any blend you like).  I also added some dried garlic.  Stir everything together, turn up the heat, and start to bring it to a boil.  Grab some greens (like kale or spinach), tear 'em up, and throw them in.   

There's some sort of adage that says "A soup boiled is a soup spoiled."  Not in this case!  If the soup comes to a rolling boil, you can turn it down some, but I just let roll away until the greens were wilted and all the ingredients were definitely hot.  

Prep-start-time to blowing-on-food-trying-to-get-it-in-mouth time: 20 min.

Review:  I'd probably add two cans of chicken next time to up the protein content.  This is definitely not high gourmet, but it was good and easy.