Saturday Soup

Saturday Soup is something my mother would make on those cold winter days as I was growing up. Everyone in the family enjoyed it and its very a healthy dish full of vegetables. Its fast and easy to make. The name Saturday Soup is from using all the left over vegetables from the week. Of course in my house, there is no such thing as leftovers so I improvise and use canned or frozen vegetables.

What you'll need:

• 1 1/2 - 2 lbs of ground beef
• 1 - 2 medium-large onions
• 1 bag of frozen peas/carrots mix OR 1 can of peas, 1 can of carrots
• 1 can of corn
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 1 can of green beans
• 1 can of small new potatoes OR 1-2 small potatoes cubed (optional)
• Garlic salt or powder
• Salt and Pepper
  

Now you can mix and match any of the vegetables you would like but those are what I always put into mine. If you like Lima Beans then put them in, don't like Carrots? Leave them out.

Dice your onion and put it into the pot with the ground beef, use about a teaspoon of garlic powder or garlic salt, about 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and just a dash of salt depending on if you use garlic powder or salt. If you use garlic salt then you may not want to salt on top of that. Cook the ground beef until browned.  Add in all your vegetables then cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Let the soup simmer for about an hour. If your ground beef is well cooked before you add the vegetables you can eat it after only 30 minutes but I find it to be tastier the longer I allow it to simmer.

We love this soup in our home and I hope you do to. Enjoy!

Corned Beef Casserole

This is a meal I always loved growing up and still love today. Its very basic and simple yet it tastes DELICIOUS! My mother was always a great cook and still is. She has a talent for cooking I hoped for but I think the talent didn't fully find me :) So my very first recipe will be one of my moms. I don't know if she created this recipe or if she found it somewhere but it is one of my all time favorites and I hope you enjoy it as well.

First off you will need a few things.

Bisquick or any biscuit recipe you wish to use. (I like Bisquick because its easy and tastes good.)
1 Large onion
1 Large Bell Pepper (Can be any color, I used 1/2 red, 1/2 green)
1 Can Corned Beef (Any brand will work)
1 Family Size Can Cream of Mushroom Soup (Any brand, I used Wal-Mart's Great Value)

First you'll need to dice your onion. I found a little trick in dicing and slicing onions Ill share with you. First cut the end off your onion. I cut the onion in half before I peel it, then remove the dried peel. I also remove the small hard center in the onion, but you don't have to. I make slices throughout the onion. I turn it to make the cross cut but I only make 2 cuts.

I then turn the onion half around and continue make my dice cuts. Cutting it this way makes it easier to complete the entire half without the onion sliding around on the sloped thin edge. It also makes a lesser chance you'll be cutting your fingers!

Then you dice your bell peppers. Remember I only used red and green because I like the colors. You can use all green, all red, or throw in some yellow peppers if you like.

Put the corned beef, the onion and the bell pepper into a hot skillet with a little bit of oil and saute just until the onion starts to cook clear. Then set it aside and let cool while you make your biscuit dough. I use Bisquick because its easy for me and I normally have it on hand but you can use any recipe you like for this. Once you get it mixed, you're going to roll it out into a large rectangle. By the time you get it rolled out, the corned beef mixture should be cooled enough for you to spread it out as shown here.

Now you're going to roll up the entire thing up length wise as if you were going to make cinnamon rolls. Once you have it all rolled up, it should look like this if you look at one of the cut ends.

So now you should have a long rolled tube. Use a sharp knife and make 1 inch thick slices and lay them into a 9 x 13 glass Pyrex dish. If you don't have a glass dish its alright, you just will need to adjust the oven temp and/or cooking time. Lay the slices flat in the bottom of the dish. Its ok to leave some room between them, they don't have to be packed in.


Then you take the cream of mushroom soup and spread it across the entire top. Sometimes I use just a tiny bit of milk to make spreading easier but most of the time I just give it a stir right in the can then pour it evenly over the top and make sure to spread it over so all of it has soup.

All you have to do now is bake it at the biscuit recipe instructions. For Bisquick, oven temp is 450 and baking time is 8-10 minutes or until top is golden brown. I cook mine about 15 minutes.

That's all there is to it I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!