Ham and Squash Soup

I guess it's time to play catch up on all the recipes I did make last week! This ham and squash soup is a gem we found on Pinterest! Paula Deen's recipes make me so happy!! You can find her original recipe on her site PaulaDeen.com! It's easy to put together and I love all the different textures and flavors in the soup itself! Let's get cookin'!

Ingredients

2 pounds yellow squash-sliced into rounds 

(Note: I quartered my slices)

6 TB butter

1 large onion-chopped

4 carrots, sliced

1 can evaporated milk

1/2 c sour cream

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 c white cheddar cheese-grated

1 1/2 c vegetable stock

2 c cooked ham

To start out you're going to melt the butter (buttah-Paul Deen lol) in a soup pot on the stove! Add the onions, carrots, squash, and a dash of salt and pepper. Saute all this together for about 20 minutes. 

Add the evaporated milk and sour cream to the vegetable mixture, and stir well! Simmer this mixture until you start to see bubbles, and then stir in the nutmeg, cheese, ham and vegetable stock! 

Warm the entire mixture through, and serve! 

I couldn't get enough of this soup, it was so delicious! I was worried about the leftovers and the squash getting to soggy, but to my surprise it held up well to finish off the next day! 

Stay tuned for a very enticing snack that I can't make enough of!! 

Until next time...

Sour Cream Enchiladas = Scrumptious

Thanks to the Pioneer Woman, and her wonderful recipes, we had a positively wonderful dinner with her sour cream enchiladas, and some chipotle pasta! You can find her recipe here, on her website! These were a little more work, and very messy (at least for me, but then again when am I not messy) but completely worth the effort! Let's get started!

Ingredients

12 Corn tortillas

Canola oil, for frying

1 can (20 oz) Enchilada Sauce

2 c Sour cream

3 c Cheddar cheese

1 c Green onion

1/2 tsp. Ground cumin

1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. 

In a bowl, you're going to to want to mix together the green onion, sour cream, 1 1/2 c cheddar cheese (THIS IS ONLY HALF OF WHAT THE RECIPE CALLS FOR), cumin and cayenne pepper! 

Heat canola oil over medium heat in a small skillet until it's beginning to smoke! In a larger skillet, pour the enchilada into another pan and heat over low/medium heat. 

Using tongs, fry the tortillas one at a time for about 5-10 seconds per side! Remove the tortilla from the oil, and place in the enchilada sauce and coat each side!

Okay, here is where it can get a bit messy. So I'll give you my step by step, which seemed to bring down the mess from 10 to a 3! 

I removed the tortilla from the sauce with the tongs and placed it on a plate. Spoon the sour cream mixture into the middle of the tortilla and roll the tortilla and place it face down in a 9x13 baking pan. 

At this point, I stopped and rinsed my hands and the tongs and dried them off on a dish towel. The first couple of times I did not rinse, I found the enchilada sauce made the oil pop in the skillet, which caused a lot of dodging of the flying hot grease! If everything is rinsed, you don't have that problem! I know it seems like a lot of work for 12 tortillas, but trust me, it's worth it! 

Once you have all 12 tortillas rolled, and face down in the pan, add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of cheddar cheese to the top of the enchiladas and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown! Remove from oven, top with salsa or whatever your heart desires and enjoy!! We absolutely loved this, and will for sure make it again! Plus with it just being the two of us, we had plenty of leftovers! 

Stay tuned for some great new recipes!

Until then...

I've Got Fishing Fever

Well, I've got the fishing fever! The weather has been warm here for the most part, take away the 20 mph wind gusts and we'd have some perfect fishing weather! DJ and I have decided that we needed to start getting some of our fish filets out of the freezer so we can make room for more! My niece has been begging me to go out fishing and help her bring in the big one! We took her fishing the first time last summer and she out-fished us and reeled in 15+ tiny sun fish all day! Now she's ready for the bigger fish! We thawed out some large mouth bass, and got to work on our own fish fry! That is one way to my heart! Take me fishing, let's fry up our catch and enjoy the company and outdoors--PERFECT DAY! So I'm going to share a homemade dipping sauce I made to along with our bass (the breading we used was store bought, but I have a recipe if you just want to do it yourself! Here's a little song by one of my favorites, Taj Mahal, about the fishing blues! Let's get started!!

Ingredients for tangy dipping sauce
1/2 c mayo
1/2 c sour cream
1/4 c Franks Red Hot Sauce
2 TB Horseradish (or spicy mustard...we used horseradish)
2 TB minced parsley (I used about 1 1/2)

You can find the recipe for the dipping sauce and breading for the fish at Frenchs.com

To make the sauce, all you need to do is mix all those ingredients together, cover and chill in the fridge until you're ready to use it!

To bread the fish, we mixed milk and one egg (probably a cup or two of milk), and then put the fish fry in a separate bowl. You'll want to coat the fish in the liquid mixture and then shake the fish fry onto each piece! We used one of our Tupperware bowls with a lid and it worked great! This is the fish fry we used!!

Once you have your pieces coated you want to make sure that your oil is hot enough to fry! We have a small fryer (Cool Daddy Elite) which is a perfect size for a couple of people! I highly recommend getting one if you like to do this sort of thing! 

Fish right out of the fryer! Looks like someone already took a bite ;)

Here it is all said and done! Sauce, fish and we whipped up a pasta side to go with it! 

Utterly delicious!! 

Fishing was always a part of my family! My Papa was the fisherman, and was always taking us fishing! I still love to go out fishing and think about him often when I'm out there! I know he's up there cheering me on when I reel in the big ones (and little ones)! I had such a great example growing up! So happy that I get to carry on his fishing legacy! It's in that way, I can still feel him with me. If you happen to not have a fisherman in the family, you can always go to the store and buy some fresh fish to use! My favorite place close by for fresh fish is always Reasors! They have always had a good selection, and everything looks delicious over in the meat section! Stay tuned for a yummy pasta dish! Until then....

~Happy Eating~