Instant Pot Creamy Tomato Soup (with slow cooker instructions)

Tomato soup is almost always a crowd favorite. Making homemade tomato soup in the past has been a challenge, producing less than delicious results. I had made this ONE with grilled cheese croutons which I liked, but my kids still preferred the can version. So I had given up of finding something to replace the quintessential tomato soup from the can. You know the soup. The kind we all loved as children, and still secretly love as adults.

A few weeks ago I got the hankerin' not for chili as the typed accent would allude, but for homemade tomato soup. I was a little cautious about trying to make some because of the aforementioned soup disasters.

After some searching, and a little self pep-talking, I found a recipe that I thought would be successful. This recipe called for roasting tomatoes instead of using the canned ones. I thought that was a good start since all the previous recipes I have tried used the canned ones.

I had posted on Instagram about the smell of the roasting tomatoes and garlic. Gosh it was ever so delightful. From that smell alone I was hopeful. Roasting the tomatoes and garlic is the "hardest" part and really it was nothing.

The soup came together easily and I only made a few alterations from the original recipe.

The use of an immersion blender (best thing ever) made this soup so smooth. In our house, it is normal for us to top our tomato soup with a little bit of sour cream. The fancy swirly depicted was just for you, normally we just drop a large dollop smack in the middle.

Another tomato soup staple...well the grilled cheese sandwich of course.

A few months ago we had these amazing grilled cheese sandwiches at our local farmer's market. They were DIVINE. In fact, they were so divine that we followed them up to another farmer's market a few hours away. Kidding. We were already planning on being there and they just happened to be there too. We like to think it was divine intervention. Anyway. I noticed something about how they made there sandwiches. They grilled the bread and cheese separate at first. Big piles of ooey gooey cheese melted all by itself and then was added to the grilled bread before letting it cook a little more.

It. Was. Divine.

So I tried it. It was life-changing and I will probably only be making them this way from now on. But this post isn't about grilled cheese sandwiches. I digress.

You should give this soup a go. Seriously. If you don't have an Instant Pot, no worries you can make it in a crock pot too. I will put those directions too.

Happy tomato soup eating!

Okay guys, so let me explain this recipe "card" situation. Bear with me for just a bit longer. I have made these recipe print offs. I admittedly do this the hard way. There are not recipe widgets in blogger (yes I know I should switch to wordpress, but since I am not sure how much I am going to blog again I don't want to switch). Because of this I have to create my own recipe template. I had one I was using, but I wanted to switch it up so I created this layout using PicMonkey of course. The image is going to be in the post and then there will be a print option. For short recipes, there will be one page. For longer ones, two.

I know it isn't as fancy as a widget, but I think it will work nonetheless for either printing or screen shotting (since that is what a lot of us do anyway).

Thanks guys!


PRINT HERE

Monte Cristo Roll Ups

Remember when I used to post a recipe every Thursday? Good times.

Memories. All alone in the moonlight...

I will stop now. These Monte Cristo Roll Ups are a glorious way to welcome back Recipe Thursdays. Let me share with you how these little balls of divine yumminess came about.

A few weeks ago our family took  a cross-country trip to the great state of Ohio. We visited friends and family. We also hit A LOT of our favorite places to eat. If you are ever in the Cleveland area, there are a couple of places we recommend you make time for.

First, make time for the West Side Market in Cleveland. 

The West Side Market is similar to an indoor Farmers Market, with vendors there almost all the time during business hours. The atmosphere is delightful and we love walking around. We take a few laps, first hitting our must-stops favorites. Then after a few laps we pick a new vendor and try something from them.

A must, MUST stop is Steve's Gyros. Drool. So good. We dream of them. DREAM. They are closed Tuesdays and Thursdays, they only take Cash, and they only sell gyros. They also always have a line of happily waiting people with cash in hand for their gyros. They are THAT good.

We normally also buy fresh made pasta and vanilla bean lemonade from vendors just around the corner from Steve's.

This year I tried these beautiful macaroons. I had never tried them before and they definitely lived up to all the hype.

So what about the whole Monte Cristo thing? First, do you know what a Monte Cristo is? It is a sandwich that is typically turkey, ham, Swiss cheese, and then battered and fried. Yes battered and fried. The first time that The Hubs called me from a business trip, raving about this heart attack on a plate, I questioned his mental status.

Don't get me wrong, it sounded good, but I was a little shocked by the gluttony the sandwich represented. I died a little inside.

Then I had one. You still might die a little inside (literally), but you will die happy. If you follow me on Instagram (@larissa_anotherday), then you know we had this monte cristo sandwich from the Melt Bar and Grilled. When we lived in Ohio they only had two restaurants in the Cleveland area. Now they have 3 up there and 2 in Columbus.

Isn't it lovely? This is a half sandwich plate. Yes the full is ridiculous.

So thanks to this Monte Cristo Sandwich, our family has been obsessed with them for years. We have tried a couple of versions of them over the years. The hardest was trying to make an actual knock off of the above sandwich. Epic fail. I don't recommend it. 

However, a waffle version and these roll ups are a yummy much easier version. They are simplified, but still sporting the quintessential monte cristo ingredients. 

Give these roll ups a try. They are sure to be a family hit.

printable version HERE

The Best Cornbread

I am not feeling very chatty today. I am running low on sleep and patience. We have a sick kiddo in the house and while he might be responsible for the lack of sleep, it is the other Little Men who are responsible for the lack of patience.

Man, it isn't even Halloween yet either. They really haven't had any sweets yet, so I am trying to figure out why they are being so very special right now. There is lots of crying, whining, and complaining.

You know that moment when you are being bellowed at from multiple children all yelling "MOM!" and everyone thinks there catastrophe it by far the most important? That is what it is like around here today.

I kind of want to yell "MOM" back and see what happens. I am pretty sure it will just add one more voice to the chorus. It might make me feel better though.

A couple of wees ago, I made this, what I am deeming The BEST Cornbread, to go with our Potato Cheddar Sausage Soup. I am really wishing it was yesterday so that I could have a big old slice slathered with butter.

I feel like cornbread right now. Well I feel like any good and therapeutic chunk of warm carbohydrate. Bread fixes everything. Well, I guess unless you are gluten intolerant and then it is the problem.

But for me bread fixes everything.

And I could sure use some today.

I highly recommend trying this cornbread out. The reason I dubbed it "THE BEST" is because I have tried tons of cornbread recipes out over our 14 years of marriage. I always come away with an "eh". I never hate them, but I never love them enough to use the same recipe again.

The search has ended. This is the bread. I will use this cornbread forevermore. It is that good. Hence the me wanting it to fix my bad day.

So if you love bread or are having a rough day or are having a good day or are having soup or chili or tacos, you should probably make this cornbread too. (PS I know that sentence was grammatically the worst)

Here is to better days full of less whining, from both the kids and me!

Frosted Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

I woke up this morning at 5 am and was reminded again, that while I can and do bake, I don't really love it a whole lot. I am not sure what it is. Upon reflection, there might be a couple of reason. Like boy does it make a mess. I also find if I bake, then I eat it. No bueno! I am also not naturally very exact in the kitchen. Which if fine for cooking, but not so much for baking.

This was all made very clear this morning when I was making donuts from scratch for Mr. Middle's birthday. Since our favorite donut shop is closed on Monday, I figured I would make him some donuts in the wee hours of the morning. They were super yummy. They really were. Now I am just a little tired, my kitchen is less than immaculate, and I have way too many donuts just laying around begging to be eaten.

Oh baking. 

So why am I lamenting about baking during a baking post? 

This is the way I figure it--if I do bake it and I do love it and I would bake it again, then I must share it. Also, that is assurance to you that this recipe is worth your time.

While I don't bake a lot, I absolutely jump on board for baking anything with banana. We love banana bake goods. LOVE them. We very rarely have bananas left over, but when we do we bake with them. Our absolute favorite are Frosted Chocolate Chip Banana Bars. So it stands to reason that we would in turn love something like that in cookie form.

Man these Frosted Banana and Chocolate Chip Cookies are delightful. They are not dense like like a bar, but they are soft and fluffy (IT'S SO FLUFFY!!!). The frosting is light and perfectly cream cheesy. Who doesn't love a good creams cheese frosting?

These cookies were easy to make, and just as important they were easy to share. Sharing is good because it insures I don't eat a dozen cookies all by myself.

If you find yourself with very ripe bananas, then I think it would be delightful idea to make these cookies. You won't regret. Either will your neighbors. Wink. Wink.

Enjoy!

Printable Recipe HERE

Southwestern Hamburgers

Burgers are delightful. When we made these a few weeks ago, we ate outside sitting on a sprawled out blanket. One of the things we love about living here is that you can eat outside  practically all Summer.

The heat dies down in the evening. The breeze is cool and refreshing. No humidity. Hardly any bugs. Yep. We are kind of unbelievably lucky. We will not mention that it can snow here quite a lot in the winter. We are not talking about winter. Plus who wants to eat soup outside? Not me. So let's just hurdle over that whole winter topic thing.

Focus on Summer. Glorious eat-out-of-doors Summer.

This burger has been shared on the blog, before the blog was really a blog. I took the picture indoors, at night. There was a flash on the bright blue plate. The hamburger did not look appealing. Which is a shame because this burger is DELIGHTFUL. Delightful I tell you.

While I have shared this burger before way back in the day, we made a few changes per The Husbands suggestion. Good suggestions too. They made this burger SO good. Guess I will keep that guy around.

If you are looking for a new hamburger to try, well this is the burger. We served our burgers with fresh strawberries and Slow Cooker Mexican Corn on the Cob

Print HERE

Happy grilling, happy eating, and happy Summer-ing (totally a word).

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Bluberry Cereal Trail Mix

Three out of my four boys all prefer eating cereal dry.

No milk. No spoons.

They like their cereal to be finger food. Which, hey, as a mom on the go I don't really have too many complaints about that. Have snack will travel.

That is always a good thing.

With Summer basically here, that means baseball, swimming lessons, sports camps, road trips and oh so many other activities. That means we are snacking a lot on the go. I really wanted to create a snack that was fun, portable, and still healthy.

So I decided to use one of my boys' favorite cereals as the jumping off point for a healthy trail mix. My boys really like Kellogg's mini shredded wheat. The flavored ones are at the top of their list. I grabbed a box of Blueberry Frosted Mini Wheats. Then I gathered up a few other ingredients and I made up a batch of this Blueberry Trail Mix.

Cereal makes the best trail mix. Plus you can pretty much make up any kind of trail mix you want. Then you throw it in any portable container and take it with you. I am not above just throwing it at my kids while driving.

My boys really liked this mix. Ninety percent wholesome, Ten percent chocolate. Perfect.

 

 Print HERE

Homemade Croutons

It will be a cold day in you know where when I give up bread. Bread is grand. I know carbs are supposed to be evil, but I just ain't buying it.

Do you wanna know what is better than just plain old bread? A loaf of chewy, delightful French bread turned into croutons, that is what.

Months and months ago I was watching an episode of The Pioneer Woman on Netflix while I was up late prepping for Middle's Woodland Theme Baptism. In one of the episodes she was making a restaurant style steak dinner. One of the items on the menu was a delightful Caesar salad with homemade croutons. The concept was not a new one. Perhaps since it was late at night and I was feeling especially peckish it seemed brilliant and extremely necessary that I have homemade croutons. I told myself I would get right on that as soon as everything settled down.

 You know what I have determined? Nothing ever settles down. For whatever reason, today I decided I really wanted a Caesar salad with some homemade croutons. I wasn't sure how to go about it and the original show was completely out of my mind. So after searching out a few ideas and then changing things up a bit, I came up with this recipe.

First off let me warn you these are good enough that you will attempt to eat them without the salad. Try to save at least some for the salad. They really do make the salad spectacular. I promise.

These are so very, very easy to make.

You need:

French bread
butter
olive oil
salt
pepper
Parmesan Reggiano cheese

So easy. These are so yummy and take barely any time. They make any salad that much better.

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Slow Cooker Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

I know, I know, it isn't really soup weather anymore. Unless you live in Idaho and then it is soup weather sporadically off and on until the end of June. You know it could be 70 one day and then snowing two days later.

We like variety around here. Well, we don't really like it but we don't really have a chance. So we are going to pretend that we like it.

The best thing about crazy weather ...

I don't have to pack away my sweaters.
I can have soup 9 months out of the year.

So yes, I made soup. The weather was just chilly enough that I hopped on that train and whipped up this soup. I had bookmarked several different recipes and did a little remix and I came up with this recipe. The end result was super dreamy and warmed me up perfectly on such a chilly day.

One of my little secret weapons in this recipe is the use of boxed wild rice.

The great thing about using a boxed wild rice is that there is a spice packet inside. That little add umph is so special. Special and fantastically yummy.

So if you have some uncharacteristically chilly days, make yourself some of this soup. If you want this soup and it is not chilly where you live, crank up the AC, pretend it is a chilly day, and make some soup. Oh and of course you need some of this crazy easy Dutch Oven Artisan Bread on the side.

Eat up and hey, thanks for stopping by another Slow Cooker Saturday.

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Marshmallow Fruit Salad

I don't always make fruit salad, but when I do I make it with marshmallows.

Okay. Kidding. I always make fruit salad, and up until last week I hadn't put even one itty bitty marshmallow into my fruit salad. I seem to remember as a kid having something similar to this Marshmallow Fruit Salad. However, it was a distant, fuzzy memory. A memory that I didn't even realize I was missing.

When The Hubs came to me and wanted to put a new fruit salad on the Easter menu and that marshmallows were involved, I was hesitant. I mean let's be honest people, putting little fluffy bits of sugar into a fruit salad kind of defeats the whole fruit and salad thing.

He convinced me quite charmingly, so the Marshmallow Fruit Salad made it onto the menu. With a little army of reservation setting up camp in my noggin, the salad was made. I tweaked the recipe just a bit, but no worries I kept in the mallows.

You put the mallow on the graham....

Sorry I digress. Name the movie. We haven't played this game for a bit.

Okay back to the fruit salad.

The salad was a hit. We owe it all to that handsome husband of mine.

My fear of the salad being too sugary was completely ill founded, due in part to the "cream" used. It not being of the whipped or aerosol variety. Intrigued? You should be. This salad was practically perfect and was a great addition to a yummy Easter meal.

Point to you Husband. Point goes to you. I will even give him a bonus point because I ate the leftovers the next day. For those of you who might be new around here, that is a big deal because I tend to hate leftovers.

So go ahead and put this on your weekly menu. It is a crowd pleaser.

 

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Inside Out Philly Cheesesteak

This week started an Eat-More-Veggies regiment at our house. The introduction of our healthy eating campaign was pretty funny. We have a weekly family counsel where we spend time together learning and growing. This week I decided we needed to talk about making healthier choices.

Without giving away the topic of the conversation for the night I simply told the boys that the whole lesson centered around a Berenstain Bears book. There was eye rolling from Oldest. What? Are you too cool for the Bears now? Geez.

Any guesses which Berenstain Bears book I read to them?

If you guessed Too Much Junk Food, you would be correct. While the boys (besides Oldest of course) appreciated a bit of story time, they did not appreciate when I told them we would be having no sweets during the week and that there would be more vegetables in their meals.

Insert a collective groan here (except from Bean because boy howdy does that kid love his veggies). They tried to barter to have more fruits and less veggies. After all, they like fruit. Ha! Silly children.

So more veggies it is.

I was really excited for these Inside Out Philly Cheesesteak peppers. I was so excited that I kept dinner a secret the whole time I was making them. I didn't want to hear no pepper-haters up in here.

My house smelled amazing the whole time these were baking. That alone got the boys all hungry and excited. I sat the boys down and served up my Inside Out Philly Cheesesteak peppers with a flare. There were some very silent groans.

Then they started to eat. Then they kept eating. Then before I knew it, their plates were clean. As was mine. I was wishing for more immediately.

They were SO good. They were also really easy to make. So a win-win.

Yum. I want another one right now.

Here are to more veggies!

Print HERE

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Carrot Cake Cookies

Whenever a cookie and a cake marry and make a cake cookie, well I am all on board with that. Yes I a sure am. When it involves carrot cake, then I am HECK YEAH on board. I have always loved carrot cake. When I was younger, I used to take seconds and thirds. And fourths. Okay so not really, but I may or may not have had a really decent sized first piece and then a regular sized second. Especially if it was my best friend's mom's cake. Goosh that was good cake AND really good cream cheese frosting.

Enough already with my love of carrot cake.

So how did these cookies come about? Well aside from the a fore mentioned love of carrot cake, it all comes down to the fact that I found these insanely adorable gummy carrots. I knew I had to get them and I knew they needed to top some kind of carroty cake goodness. I got these gummy carrots at Winco Foods. If you don't live by a Winco, then you can find some similiar HERE

Welcome in these Carrot Cake Cookies.

I made them to give to some new neighbors that just moved in. I also made sure I made some for us to eat, because if I didn't I am not sure I would have had any to give to the neighbors. These cookies are so dang good.

I think you should make yourself some. You and the arrival of Spring deserve it.

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Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie

Life has been crazy busy around here. Okay, so it is always crazy. However, it just seems to have an extra dose of crazy around here. Things especially get hairy around the time the kids get home from school. Most days it feels a little like a snowball rolling down a massive mountain picking up speed as it goes, taking out trees, moose, rocks, and humans in it way. By trees I mean me. By moose, I mean me. Basically, all of the above, I mean me.

Charming story Larissa, why are you sharing? Good and valid question.

The answer comes down to this: most days if dinner isn't quick and easy and/or already pulled together that means we are having breakfast for dinner.

AKA if it isn't in a slow cooker, then eggs and toast it is. I exaggerate a tad. Sometimes we have tacos.

Since the good old slow cooker has been getting some use, I decided it was time I share a slow cooker recipe here and there. Remember when I would share a slow cooker recipe every Saturday. Remember when it was called Slow Cooker Saturday. 

We had this Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie a few weeks ago. Traditional chicken pot pie is delightful. However, it can also be time intensive to make. I refer back to that whole no time thing I was previously talking about.

Ain't nobody got no time for that. Any one tired of that line yet? Obviously I am not.

This Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie is packed with flavor and it is so simple to throw together.

The filling is made in the slow cooker. Just before the filling is done you pop refrigerator biscuits in the oven. When the filling is done you top with one or two biscuits. You can even sprinkle some shredded cheddar cheese on top if you are feeling wild and crazy.

Brownie M&M Cookies

My brownie obsession has now crossed over to the Brownie M&M cookies. If someone were to ask I probably would only admit to eating one or two, not the seven I have eaten in two days. These cookies are chocolatey, obviously. They are chewy. They are brownies in cookie form. Then of course there are the M&M's. What I am trying to convey is that these cookies are good. Like really good.

I do not make cookies often. Heck I actually do not bake often. However, when I do most likely it will involve brownies and milk chocolate. Heavens I love milk chocolate. My poor Hubs is inflicted with Dark Chocolateitis. Poor, poor husband.

These cookies also make great holiday, party, or everyday cookies because you can switch out the M&M's for the specific event.

Man, don't they look yummy?

I hope you didn't just lick your screen. That can't be good for your computer. So try to avoid the licking of technology and go ahead and just make yourself some Brownie M&M Cookies. Your computer will thank you.

printable recipe HERE

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