Soups On

*( This is a picture of a crab stew we did a couple months back.)
There's frost on the pumpkin, as we say in the south.
The roof tops and grass blades are white in the morning and smoke escapes your mouth when you breathe. Winter clothes are officially out of the closet!

Nothing gets you thinking about nice pots of warm food more so than cold weather. Nancy Brown just blogged about this recently.

I'm usually an unplanned cook. I can plan a lovely week-full of menu and not get to any of them because:

1) I forget to take the meat out to thaw
2) I don't have all the ingredients when it comes time to cook
3) Between homeschool, writing, doing laundry, and carpooling I run out of time and it's 5 o'clock with nothing on the stove

That's when we have nights like last night. I quickly boil some chicken breasts and eggs and put together a chef salad.

My dh was starving within an hour. He went to the store and picked up ingredients for chili and said, "I'd like this tomorrow night."

Sure, honey! I smiled.

Those are also the nights of cereal bowls, leftovers, sandwiches, tuna on crackers, tamales out of a can, or beef stew (out of a can) over bread.

So here's my best-laid plans for the rest of the week. I do owe this to my dh. After all, he's the one coming home in the cold night air after a long day's work. And he's a very good provider and husband and daddy! It's the least I'm called to do in this vocation of wifehood.

Wednesday ~ chili
Thursday ~ taco soup
Friday ~ shrimp gumbo
Saturday ~ pancakes, bacon, and eggs
Sunday ~ Tamale CasserOLE' (the recipe is on the back of the Hormel tamale can) This is one deliciosa recipe that makes people think you had cooking lessons in Italy. I promise! ; )

We just had an online gumbo cooking lesson at Nancy Brown's Flying Stars blog. Click here if you want to try it: Chicken/Sausage Gumbo. My dh made that this past Sunday night and we had friends over to share the pot. Yum!