Delicious Clean Simple Vegetable Soup

Yum, yum, yum. I love to eat and sometimes worry about cooking a clear vegetable soup because I think it won't make me happy and satisfy me. Today's soup however was perfect and yes simple and healthy and very delicious. The secret vegetable ingredient are the two leeks I cut up and added because the end result gives the soup a lovely buttery taste. Here's what I did:

Chop up and add to a pot with olive oil on medium heat, 1 whole big white onion, 2 leeks, white parts only, chopped and added to the pot. Saute until nice and soft. Then add 1 red pepper sliced and chopped, 1/2 cup of washed spinach leaves, 1 zucchini chopped, 1 /4 cup of sun dried tomatoes chopped up, add enough water (1 quart) to cover vegetables and chicken instant stock mix (about 6 tbsp). Bring to a boil then simmer until veggies are to your liking. Leeks really make this soup lovely. Enjoy!

Homemade Brown Sugar and Pancakes Sans (without) Eggs

Twice this week I've been without ingredients and did a marvelous job of improvising. My son and I were making chocolate chip cookies and had no brown sugar. To that we combined: 1 cup of white sugar with 2 tbsp. of molasses. It works amazingly well.

The other day I was making pancakes for dinner and realized I had no eggs! Surely there had to be a recipe on the Internet that would solve this problem and of course there was! While I can't find the original recipe I used, this one looks pretty close:

Eggless Pancakes: 1 cups of flour, 2 tbsp. of sugar, 2 tbsp. of baking powder, 1/8 tsp. of salt, 1 cup of milk, 2 tbsp. of oil. Mix dry ingredients first, then mix all of the wet ingredients and add to the dry ingredients and stir until all the ingredients are blended and smooth. Pour 1/4 of batter onto an oily hot griddle. Turn the element or griddle down to a medium low heat and flip the pancake with bubbles form on the top of the pancake. Cook another minute or so or until nicely brown and the batter inside is fluffy and cooked. Serve with butter and maple syrup!

Rum Ribs with Green and Yellow Beans with Garlic and Pancetta

These rum ribs are simply divine and my hubby loved them. The recipe was given to me from my sister who got it from her mother-in-law. I love it when people share their recipes. They are nicely sweet with a little chili sauce kick. I had to improvise with some of the ingredients and will put my improvs in a bracket beside the original recipe. Here's the recipe: 1 cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup of chili sauce, 1/4 cup of ketchup, 1/2 cup of dark rum (I used amber rum), 1/4 cup of soy sauce (I only had oyster sauce), 1 tbsp. of Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp. dry mustard, 2 cloves of garlic (I used minced from a jar), pepper. Then you cook and cover ribs for 350 degrees for 1.5 hours (I boiled mine for an hour). Then you take out of the oven or take out of the pot and drain, and pour 1/2 sauce over the ribs and put back into the oven for 30 minutes. Take out of the oven again and put the rest of the sauce on and return to the oven for an additional 30 minutes (1 hour total with sauce). For the beans, I love using Europe's Best brand and simply added the frozen beans to an olive oiled and garlicy pan, and sauteed until the beans were just cooked, then added 1/2 cup of pancetta and tossed until both the pancetta and the beans crisp just slightly. A lovely dinner, you will enjoy.