Here is a yummy, yummy recipe my family loves. It's called Tuscan Soup - Click here for recipe and is a lot like the Zuppa Toscana from Olive Garden. I am salivating just thinking about it. Wait, I didn't eat lunch today. Man, I am really hungry! This last week of school is nuts! I did make butter with 4th graders today and played a ton of pioneer games rather than eating lunch, but I digress....I use this same recipe and substitute THRIVE foods from Shelf Reliance, which are mostly freeze dried. They retain the same texture, flavor, and nutrients as they originally had before being freeze dried. The best part is they are already cut up and ready to go by just adding water! It's almost like magic. It makes my giddy just thinking about how simple this is. I take a few minutes and make a whole bunch of batches up and store them in baggies in my pantry so on a busy night, my kids or I can just boil water and have a hearty soup a few minutes later. So....for this recipe I am going to give you a loose version. I just kind of dump in what looks good.
So, here's the scoop....in a big ziploc baggie I dump in
6 tsp THRIVE chicken boullion (does it have to be THRIVE? Heavens no! It's just what I happen to have)
a sprinkle of THRIVE FD onions....maybe 1/4 cup ? depends how much you like onions
1/2 - 1 cup of THRIVE FD Sausage (Its already cooked!)
1/2 - 1 cup of THRIVE potato hunks or chunks, depends what's opened (the square ones or the shrivled ones...just not the pearls) (for my THRIVE friends, this will only make sense to you)
1/3 cup ish THRIVE FD spinach
plus salt and pepper if you want
Then, in a small baggie I put in 2 TBS THRIVE powdered milk (I put this little sealed one in right in the big one and seal that one too)
On the big baggie I write 6 cups water
Directions:
Boil the 6 cups water, dump all the big baggie stuff in and cook until soft...maybe 20 minutes (don't know...never timed it!) Then add a little water to the powdered milk and dump in and then you have the best soup ever. (We have just dumped the dry milk in, but it's pretty lumpy that way)
You could do this in a crock pot, but the potatoes might be mushy and I, again, wouldn't add the milk till the very end.
I have even dumped it all in together and boiled it. Was about the same. I am not a chef, but I know that milk products shouldn't be cooked a long time or at high heat. Couldn't tell, really, but thought I should follow the milk rule. Maybe I just got lucky the time it turned out. Don't know!
Sorry it's so unspecific, but that's the way I roll! Good luck! Let me know when you try it and how it turns out! If you are jealous about how nice it would be to not have to brown the sausage, sort through slimy spinach (at least that was all I used to keep in my fridge), peel and cut potatoes, cut onions, etc.....please let me know and I would love to do a consultation with you and have you try some of this magic stuff, or just jump right in and order from my website on the sidebar or click here! I also do home parties where we eat food and talk and have a great time with your friends and family and teach these ideas so more people can sit down to a healthy meal more conveniently and often, or build their food storage without much thought or stress!
Oh! I should tell you about one of the BEST parts about Shelf Reliance. Despite they fact they have changed the way I cook, it also has changed the way I shop! Their website figured out everything my family would need for a 3 month supply of food. I chose a budget of $100 a month and again, just like magic, $100 worth of product shows up on my doorstep once a month. To set up the plan, I just put in the people in my family and how many calories each of us consumes a day (like I knew! I just went with the default number). That's the THRIVE Planner. Then it works it all into my THRIVE Q, which is the monthly shipments. I can change it anytime, pause it, stop it, increase it, decrease it, whatever I want or need to do for that month. I actually don't think about it or mess with it and wah-lah, I have food on my porch. My shopping trips to the grocery store are much faster and less frequent now as well. If I run out of milk, no problemo! I have it in my pantry. Eggs, yep. Sour cream, yep. Cheese, yep. Lots of others, YES! I am telling you, this truly has changed me!
Do you have a yummy, easy, healthy dinner that is a staple at your house? THRIVE or not, please share! Looking forward to Wacky Wednesday! See you tomorrow.
