Tomato & Wild Rice Soup and Wonton Appetizers

Quite often people will ask what I do with all my home canned foods. For some of the foods, the use is fairly obvious but I think many are surprised by some of the more novel ways I use my preserves. One of my goals as a busy mom has always been to create home made convenience foods. These are canned, frozen or dried home made foods that are meant to help put quick but healthy meals on the table.

Tomato & Wild Rice Soup

Soup is always one of my first choices for a quick meal. I can up several jars of various soups that can be simply heated and served along with a few soups that are similar to commercial concentrated soups so need milk or water added. The concentrated soups are nice by themselves but are also nice with rice, noodles or barley added. These ingredients do not can well at home so are best left out then added later.

Tuesday I started with on 500 ml jar of tomato soup then added almost 500 ml of 2% milk and about 2 cups of left over organic wild rice mix. I warmed this to the boiling point on medium heat stirring often then reduced the heat and let the soup simmer for about 10 minutes. A simple sprinkle of dried parsley served as the garnish. This was a nice, flavourful soup that used up left over rice. The basic tomato soup recipe is lovely and quite easy to make. If you don't can, do consider making a batch of this soup and freezing it. You certainly won't regret it!

Wonton Appetizers

We are hosting at least four larger events (more than 20 people) this month. That has left me with doing a bit of experimenting for appetizers. So I'm flipping through a magazine and came across wonton appetizers. Immediately I thought I could easily use any filling I wanted and the wonton wrappers. I figured I could make them sweet and dessert like or savory meal like tid bits. This was a trial run but got very good reviews from my most demanding critics, my family. These appetizers will be appearing at our first major event this weekend. I'm going to do this as a method instead of a recipe because honestly you could fill these cups with anything!

Method: Lightly spray regular sized muffin tins. Push one wonton wrapper into each hole. Do not try to make these look perfect. I simply pushed them into the hole and smoothed the bottom just a little. Bake at 177º C (350ºF) for 5 minutes or until wontons are turning golden brown on edges. Do not over bake. Spoon filling* into cups then bake another 5 to 7 minutes.

* Filling: I mixed 4 oz cream cheese, about ½ c home canned salsa and 1/2 c home canned seasoned ground beef together then spooned into the wrappers. Then I topped with shredded sharp cheddar cheese.