Warm Meal for a Chilly Day

I've been working on reorganizing my kitchen since I now have the big pantry cupboard in place. What a blessing it is proving to be--the best part being that I can reach things! For a short person, that's huge. Often, especially in new houses, I find the wall cabinets are out of my reach, even the bottom shelves. My big cupboard is well within reach of all but the back of the top shelf. Perfect for me.

It's funny how when you make changes like this, you feel energized. With the cabinet and my much less cluttered kitchen (okay, for some of you it might still be cluttered, but for me it's a lot better!) I feel like cooking more. Yesterday I was browing through a cookbook bought at a used book sale called Cooking with Herbs (can't find it online, but I'll post a link when I locate it). Jaime and I found the recipe for Dilly Bacon Cornbread in there, and yesterday I found a recipe for Cheese and Chive Biscuits. My chives are just the right size for cutting, so the biscuits went on the evening's menu. Since it was a gray and drizzly day, I thought soup would be good and put together a Tomato-Herb Soup that went well with the biscuits. Dessert was homey Applesauce Cake (I posted the recipe here last year).

The biscuits are super simple. Just make your usual recipe for biscuits, but add 3/4 cup of grated sharp cheddar and 1/4 cup of chopped fresh chives before adding the milk. (You can use the biscuit recipe I posted last year. It works fine for this.)

Look at the cheese oozing out of these warm biscuits. Yum! Buttered with real butter, these were delicious, especially dipped in the tomato soup.

I didn't have a recipe for the tomato soup, but went by taste and what I had available. I chopped up and onion and a couple sticks of celery and sauteed them til soft and the onions were translucent. I added two jars of canned tomatoes, a clove of garlic, some red pepper, black pepper and salt, and about a pint of water and simmered for about 30 minutes. Then I added oregano, rosemary and basil, and simmered another 5 minutes. Before serving, I pureed about half of the soup in the blender and mixed it back in. I thickened the soup with about 2 teaspoons of corn starch mixed with 1/2 cup of warm water and brought to a boil for about a minute.

It. Was. Good. When I make it again I'll add chicken broth instead of water, and a bit more red pepper.

We tasted the applesauce cake but since company was coming for the weekend we left the rest for later.This cake is so easy to make and takes no milk or eggs.