Cabbage Roll Soup

Welcome to Wednesday! :)

It's finally feeling a bit fall-ish around Middle Tennessee, so soup is allowed on the menu. :D (Sorry, but I cannot BEAR to eat soup when it's freakishly hot outside...) Kenn loves cabbage, and cabbage rolls, so this is what I made him: Cabbage Roll Soup from Hey! That Tastes Good!

I was surprised at how much I actually liked this soup. I don't tend to enjoy too many tomato-based soups; I think perhaps it's the texture. I used the tomato sauce, NOT the diced tomatoes in here, and that just might have made the difference!

I probably should have made my cabbage ribbons just a tad smaller, but that would have been an aesthetic thing. :D The recipe says it serves FOUR. When I told Kenn that, he looked at me and said, "Four WHAT?!" - it made a HUGE pot of soup. We ate these big bowls, AND I have several jars in the freezer! It's a YES, PLEASE! recipe - easy, healthy, gluten-free, and hearty.

Come back on Friday and see the rolls I made to serve with it. BOY, HOWDY. :D

Have a WONDERFUL day, friend. Be BLESSED!

Bacon Cheeseburger Roll-Up

Happy Wednesday! How are you? Have you had a good summer? Are you ready to roll back into the fall/school routine? Routine. What a nice, safe word that sounds like... :D This year has been all OVER the place at our house, and "routine" days have been few and far between.

SO. Today's recipe is for a Bacon Cheeseburger Roll-Up from Melissa's Recipes.

I made this as an easy take-along dinner for some friends who'd suffered a sudden loss. (This has been a ROUGH year for many of my loved ones. :( ) I wanted to take them something that was easy for me, and easy for them to reheat, since most of the family had just come back from a long trip. I made them TWO of these - they've got four kids, most of them teens or pre-! - and made myself one to do for this blog post. :)

Let's see. The only thing I think I did differently was that I used a little less bacon per roll, but it wasn't a LOT less. The roll turned out to be pretty long, and wanted to break easily. I did wrap and transport both of theirs in one piece, because I didn't want the insides to come out all over the place! :)

This is what mine looked like on the inside. I got about a dozen pieces out of the roll. I ate these two for my lunch that day, and froze the rest - I wanted to know if it would do well if frozen. And YES, it worked wonderfully! I wrapped two pieces in paper towel, and heated for 1.5 - 2 minutes.

I'm NORMALLY a big ketchup person, but I liked the flavor of these without my ketchup this time. The filling - and yes, I know Velveeta's got lots of bad things in it, so I don't use it often at all!! - was really good and quite creamy. The crust held up well to the rolling, even where I was afraid it wouldn't.

SO. This gets a YES, PLEASE! And my friend came up to me Sunday and told me her kids were begging her to get the recipe. :D So let me know if you try it, and what you think of it! :)

Have a wonderful day, dear friend! BE BLESSED!!!!!!!

Asian Meatballs

Welcome to Wednesday! Are you having a good week?

I had a Premiere Jewelry party on President's Day, and I made four new recipes. This is one of the four! This is Asian Meatballs from Gimme Some Oven. :D

One of the good things about these meatballs is that I could make the meatballs up to the baking point, and the sauce, ahead of time. Then I baked off the meatballs and heated the sauce so we were ready to eat when everyone got here.

The meatballs were really tender! The sauce, I would probably back off the hoisin a little bit - it was pretty strong. Maybe up the sesame oil JUST a touch. But overall, these get a YES, PLEASE! from us.

I will say I did NOT like them so much reheated. The meatball toughened up, and it was just not nearly as good. But you could use the meatball part of this recipe for an Asian noodle bowl, and they would be wonderful!

OK, I'm outta here. :D Be BLESSED - and try something new! :)