Make your own soup!

It's cool here in the Netherlands quite often so I'm always whipping together soups! This soup was a play on a French Onion Soup with a thick slice of Beer Bread! I braised the onions in beer so the soup also had some beer flavor as well! Turned out quite tasty!  These make your own adventures usually start with me being hungry and then throwing together a bunch of random things I have already together.  Things I always have handy are Lemons, Limes (great for Asian style ramens), Garlic, Onions, Bouillon, Butter, and Bell Peppers! Pretty easy with sauces and spices to throw together something quick and delicious.

Fully Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Have leftover baked potatoes from your summer barbecue? Turn them into a wonderful delicious soup!! This soup is amazing, I've made it several times and it's always a hit, really doesn't need side dishes or anything because it's very filling!  Here is the recipe: Fully Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Rum and Coke Gummis!!

Super cute and super easy, great for parties.  Buy Haribo Coke Bottle Cady or the Cherry Cola ones then pour rum over them!  Cherry Jim Beam with the Cherry Cola for a Whisky and Coke would be good as well, basically you just need alcohol and Gummis to make a great easy boozy treat!

Bruschetta Board!

Here in the Netherlands bruschetta is usually called toasts and very rarely is it actually like the traditional tomato based bruschetta you're thinking of, even if that's how it's listed on the menu, I've learned this the "hard" way, they're always still very delicious.  Before I moved to the Netherlands in Arizona there is a restaurant called Postinos which I fell in love with because of their bruschetta board and it's absolute perfection in the balancing of flavors, so I decided to make a Bruschetta Board of my own as the bread, vegetables and meat here are absolutely fantastic!

Ok here we have 6 different kinds, I'm going to start from the left top corner, which is the one that kicked off this whole thing when I found the recipe!

Top Left the topping is Leeks, and blue cheese over a spread of Goat Cheese.  The topping recipe can be found on Smitten Kitchen's site here: leek toasts with blue cheese

Second one is Roasted Red Paper with capers over cream cheese

Third is Truffle Salami over pesto

Fourth is traditional bruschetta with tomato, onions, and basil tossed in balsalmiv vinegar over a smear of roasted garlic

Second Row

First one is Serrano ham over Fig Jam and Mascarapone

Second one is Shaved Asparagus, almonds, and parmesan over cream cheese

Strawberry Lemon Vodka Crush

I made this one up but it was really delicious, I made it because I wanted to make Basil Simple Syrup, naturally I then needed a way to use it!

Start with a high ball glass, place sliced strawberries and sugar in the bottom, muddle slightly, squeeze in some lemon juice add a little basil simple syrup, 2 oz of vodka and 4 - 8oz of ginger beer. Garnish with Strawberry and Lemon!

To make basil simple syrup combine 1c sugar, 1c water and 6 basil leaves in a pot, bring to a boil.  Boil until mixture is reduced by about half.

MarleySpoon Mealbox review!

In order to start eating better and cut down on length of trips to the grocery store we decided to try a mealbox, we looked into 2 options Hello Fresh and Marley Spoon.  We decided on trying Marley Spoon because the food is more of what we are used to eating, it looked more adventurous and tasty, We are very pleased with the results, every meal has fed us and usually with leftovers.  Every one has been delicious and simple to prepare even with having to translate them from Dutch to English. When you pick the meals you are ordering they let you know for each recipe what you will need to have on hand ingredient-wise which is just things like vinegar, salt, pepper etc and what kitchen things you'll need like a baking sheet etc.  I have included pictures of how it arrives and several of the meals we've made. You can order the meals here in the Netherlands: https://marleyspoon.nl and in the USA: www.marleyspoon.com

Arrival:

Inside the Box:

Inside the bag:

This specific meal is stroganoff, which we haven't made yet but I wanted to show an example of how things came.

This is a clearer view of the front of the recipe cards. I didn't inlude the back because it's in Dutch but it's 6 pictures with instructions on how to prepare the ingredients: 

FINALLY the meals: 

 Saltimbocca

Chocolate Chilli 

 Sausage on Lentil Salad with Cranberry Chutney

 Chicken with Oven Roasted Vegetables

 Pork Pita

 Hearty Fish Stew

Spicy Chicken Sandwiches