the blog addiction

Last night I made Tortilla Soup. You can find the recipe and blog entry on PW's blog. She is fantastic. I enjoy her blogs immensely. She has several specific categories and always has a funny line or two. I mostly enjoy how she shares the step by step process of cooking. I've learned a lot from various cooks, media and from my own mistakes on cooking. But I'm still a visual learner and I appreciate PW's form of "teaching". She does home school her children, so I'm guessing this love (or maybe appreciation) of teaching is just a part of who she is. I'm sure she's written about it. There is so much on her blog that I haven't even made past June 2010 (going backward chronologically speaking).

So this tortilla soup. It's not a secret recipe. In fact, judging by the comments on her post this is a well-known recipe. I had never heard of it, but it sounded yummy so I gave it a try. It's winter and I've been trying a lot of soups.

Delicious. Everything about it was scrumptious. It's very simple and fairly basic. Season some chicken and bake it in the oven (that gets rid of the pesky salmonella or e coli or whatever lurks on raw chicken). Cook some onion and pepper (I only used red, we aren't fans of green), throw in a can of tomatoes (or Rotel to make life easier), then add two cans of black beans (there's other stuff that goes in it too, if you want the recipe, click here). Simmer it all together until the soup is happy (like happy little trees). Add some strange concoction of corn meal stirred into warm water (I think this gave it depth) and then slice corn tortillas.

It's like chili, only with chicken. And then you add the sliced tortillas and that makes all the difference. Of course we topped it with monterey jack cheese, sour cream, red onion, crushed tortilla chips, avocado and taco sauce. There are leftovers and this will be made again.

I very much enjoy this new blog, as you know because I've shared it. I guess I've introduced her to some of my blog followers. I was cursed. It's okay, I know Kelly means well. If anything she'll drop my boring blog like a bad habit. I'm okay with that as long as she promises to replace me with PW. (Of course I'm hoping that since I gave her a shout out in my blog she won't drop me, especially since she's one of three regular readers... no pressure!) So here's my disclaimer: you don't have to check out PW, but I highly recommend her. I'll probably stop talking about her so much once I've gone through all her recipes... or summer comes and there's more to do.

Or not.