Recipe: Green Smoothies

Recently I have acquired a single serving blender for making smoothies. This morning I was inspired to use it seeing as I'm up way earlier than I should be. If you want to know more about green smoothies and their health benefits you should check out http://greensmoothiesblog.com/. This lady has a lot of valuable information as well as tons of recipes! Making a green smoothie is really simple. It's basically greens + fruit!
Here's what I made this morning:

Recipe: Zuppa Toscana Soup

Do you like the Olive gardens never ending soup, salad, and bread stick days? I do! And you know what soup I always order? The Zuppa Toscana Soup. and you know what else? I know how to make a version of it that is just as good as what you get at Olive Garden. So I'm going to share it with you!

Ingredients:

• 2 bunches Kale, Picked Over, Cleaned, And Torn Into Bite Sized Pieces
• 12 whole Red Potatoes, Sliced Thin
• 1 whole Onion, Chopped
• 1-1/2 pound Italian Sausage
• 1/2 teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes (more To Taste)
• 2 cups Low Sodium Chicken Broth
• 2 cups Whole Milk
• 4 cups Half-and-half
• Splash Of Heavy Cream
• Fresh Or Dried Oregano 
• Black Pepper To Taste

Recipe: Roast Cornish Hens with Sage and Garlic

So instead of doing a turkey for Thanksgiving this year, we opted for cornish hens. They are smaller and easier to deal with when you don't have enough people to eat an entire turkey. Plus, I eat turkey all year round. after much searching I found this wonderful recipe on Saveur.com. Unfortunately it was for a whole chicken. So I modified it for the cornish hens. Basically I just used 5 cornish hens in place of 1 bird and followed he recipe from there. Pretty easy!

Ingredients:

5 Cornish hens or a 4lb chicken
1 lemon
22 fresh sage leaves
3 cloves garlic
6 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
Kosher salt
2 tbsp. olive oil
Ground black pepper, to taste
8 sprigs parsley
2 small onions, quartered
4 carrots, cut into 2" pieces

Recipe: Cheeseburger Soup

I found this super yummy recipe while looking around at stuff on Pinterest (love that site!). I made a few modifications to the recipe since the one complaint that most people had about this recipe was the lack of flavor. You can view the original recipe here on Taste of Home. Now my version, let's be honest here... WAS AMAZING! It definitely wasn't lacking flavor! So here is my version of the recipe!

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. ground sirloin (you can use ground beef too, but the better the meat, the better the flavor)

1 small or medium chopped white onion 

3/4 cup shredded carrots

3 stalks celery chopped

1 1/2 tsp dried basil

1 1/2 tsp dried parsley

1 large clove of garlic diced

4 tbls butter (divided)

4 cups chicken broth or stock

1 3/4 lbs diced or sliced baby red potatoes (you can peel them if you like, but I left the skins on)

1/4 cup flour or arrowroot powder or cornstarch (this is the thickening agent so use whatever you or have on hand, I used arrowroot powder)

3 cups shredded cheese (you can again use whatever you want. I went with a sharp cheddar, but really any type of strong flavored melty cheese would be good in this)

1 1/2 cups milk

1/4 cup sour cream

Salt & Pepper (however much you want)

Recipe: Super Simple & Delicious Acorn Squash

What a beautiful fall day for some oven roasted squash. This is my favorite way to eat squash. This is a super yummy and super simple recipe to make. People who don't like squash tend to actually like this recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 Acorn Squash (halved & seeded)

2 teaspoons butter

2 tablespoons apricot or apple preserves

2 tablespoons brown sugar