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Ontario, Canada
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
--Bobby Flay

For Your Information

Please watch this area for important information like updates, food recalls, polls, contests, coupons, and freebies.
  • [March 19, 2020] - Effective Mar 17, this blog will no longer accept advertising. The reason is very simple. If I like a product, I will promote it without compensation. If I don't like a product, I will have no problem saying so.
  • [March 17, 2020] - A return to blogging! Stay tuned for new tips, resources and all things food related.
  • [February 1, 2016] - An interesting report on why you should always choose organic tea verses non-organic: Toxic Tea (pdf format)
  • Sticky Post - Warning: 4ever Recap reusable canning lids. The reports are growing daily of these lids losing their seal during storage. Some have lost their entire season's worth of canning to these seal failures! [Update: 4ever Recap appears to be out of business.]

Popular Posts

Monday, May 10, 2021

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

I grow several herbs indoors year round.  One of my best producers is sweet basil and honestly, you simply can't have too much basil!  Sweet basil germinates easily and is rather problem free.  New plants can be started simply by putting the cuttings in water.  Properly looked after, you will have all the sweet basil you can use.  Basil can easily be dried, works well as a canning ingredient and basil pesto freezes well. 


Working the rule of three, I kicked up a cold weather, pantry favourite that starts with a base of home canned beef stock and home canned tomato basil sauce.  In this case, the three were: frozen, canned, dry all from the pantry.  Yes there are home canned tomato soup recipes and I do a couple but I find certain sauces lend themselves nicely for soup.   I added ditali pasta, ground beef and few more ingredients but the special ingredient, cream cheese really took this soup to the next level! 

Wow, the cream cheese addition was a huge winner!  This soup was rich and creamy with just a wee hint of tang.  It was a true comfort meal, perfect for a chilly winter day that paired nicely with a loaf of homemade sourdough bread.


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