Spaghetti Sauce

It's tomato time and a glut of tomatoes means we can put a bunch away as sauces!  Yay!

This year's harvest has gone mostly to spaghetti sauce - we've gotten 15 pints so far.   I had two that didn't seal, so they went to lovely versions of eggplant lasagna and zucchini lasagna.   So. Good.

Here's my recipe for sauce.

Here's a link to a previous post with a bunch of other tomato sauce-y recipes, too!



Robin's Spaghetti Sauce
www.rurification.com

garlic
onions
olive oil
butter
canned tomatoes or fresh tomatoes
salt
dried basil, oregano, thyme and parsley.


Here's my approach to spaghetti sauce. It's not really a recipe, but more of a process. I don't measure. It's always fantastic. It's always easy. In fact, Claire has taken over making this sauce and hers is even better. [She won't tell me her secret.]

1. Slice up some onions and garlic and saute them in olive oil and butter until transparent.
2. Open a couple of jars of tomatoes or tomasqua and dump it in with the onions.  OR roughly cut up the fresh tomatoes you have on hand.    Or both.
3. Cook it down, down, down until it's the consistency you want.
4. Add dried oregano [plenty], salt [to taste], basil [plenty], thyme [generous pinch], and parsley [generous pinch]. Stir it well.
5. Grind it all up in the blender to pulverize the skins and vegetable chunks. My crew prefers smooth sauce.

For canning: put into clean jars and cover with clean lids and rings. Process according to instructions in the Ball Blue Book [link in the book list on the sidebar] or another reputable canning instruction source, such as the National Center for Home Food Preservation [link in sidebar].

If you want to make a meat sauce, then cook up some ground beef or sausage until it's crumbly and crispy, then add it to the sauce. [Note: I do not can meat sauce.]

Tomatoes

We've been canning tomatoes!  100 lbs of tomatoes yields 63 quarts.   It took the four of us about 8 hours over two days to get them all done.

Cost:  $48 for 100 lbs of tomatoes.   Plus lids, rings and jars.  

And in the nick of time, too.   We're down to a single jar of last year's tomatoes left.

We'll use them to make sauces, tomato soup with lots of basil and thyme, minestrone with beans, squash and a bit of oregano.   Best winter food ever.

A Little Winter Canning

We ran out of barbecue sauce.  Completely.  There was weeping and wailing and sadness.  What can I say?   We like our barbecue sauce.  A lot.

I make the sauce in large batches and a single batch will yield 7-8 pints of sauce.  Enough to last and to give some away [though this year I have been expressly forbidden to give any away.  No Sharing the Sauce, Mom.]

Well.  Okay, then.

I'll share the recipe instead.   Here you go!


Robin's Favorite Barbeque Sauce 
www.rurification.com

7 1/2 cups brown sugar
6 1/2 cups ketchup
1/2 cup molasses
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
3 rounded tablespoons mustard powder
3 tablespoons salt
3 tablespoons paprika [smoked paprika is really good, too!]
3 tablespoons black pepper
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder  or 1 entire head of garlic, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon onion powder  or 2 onions, minced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

This year I ran out of brown sugar, so I used 3 cups brown sugar and 3 cups of honey instead.  Perfect!  Honey is sweeter than sugar, so you can use about 25% less of it when you're substituting.

Mix all ingredients together in a large pot and bring to boil.   Ladle into clean jars; cover with lids and rings and process for canning.     Makes 7-8 pints of sauce. 

[According to the National Center for Food Preservation, you can process barbecue sauce in pint jars in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes.   There's a link to them in the sidebar in case you want to check altitudes, etc. ]

I Heart Homemade Sauerkraut

I've been hungry for sauerkraut.  I love sauerkraut.  Plus, it's a great winter food.   It's tasty.  It's good for you.

One thing though - it stinks.

We make it anyway.   I've posted some old fashioned methods here before.

Here's the first time I made kraut.

Here's the second one.

This year I decided to try a method I found on Food in Jars blog.  It was super easy and there was no pounding.   It does mean getting your hands in there and squeezing for a bit.

I used a small head of cabbage, about 1  1/2 Tablespoons of salt and a sprinkle of caraway seeds because I'm all about the authentic kraut experience.

I cut the cabbage into quarters and removed the core.  Then I sliced everything very thinly by hand with a knife.  I put it all in a giant bowl, mixed the cabbage and salt and seeds with my hands, squeezing it all until the cabbage released the water.  It only took a few minutes, interrupted by the occasional washing up of jars, table, etc.   When the cabbage was looking transparent and there was a good amount of water in the bottom of the bowl, I packed it all into a quart jar. [It'll feel WET.  You'll know.]  Put some sort of weight in it to keep the cabbage below the water.  The water came to the top of the jar, so I set the whole thing in a bowl to catch the overflow.   As it ferments, bubbles will form in the kraut and displace some of the water.   It will ooze out, so make sure you put your jar on a dish,  in a bowl or a deep lid.   Watch for overflow and empty and wash it at least every day if not more often.   Let it set on your counter/window for a week, then pop it in the fridge and it's good to go.   Naturally fermented.  Nature's finest food.

Note on weights:  I used a wide mouth jar for the kraut, so I used a narrow mouth glass insert from an old zinc jar lid as my weight.   You can use a small mouth canning lid, a 4 oz. jelly jar capped and full of water, or a real life pickle weight instead.   Feel free to be creative. [I confess, I'm kind of really wanting those pickle weights, though...]

Hope you make some and hope you love it!    Happy November!

UPDATE:  It took 7 days to get gorgeous and delicious sauerkraut this way.  Fastest ferment ever.   Bonus, no stink.  This will forever be my go-to method for making sauerkraut.  

Fig, Honey and Walnut Jam

I have gotten more than 50 little figs off my Chicago Hardy fig tree so far this year.   They're a little smaller than a golf ball, but gorgeous and sweet and I'm so excited that I can grow figs here!

I knew I'd need at least 40 for this recipe, so as they ripened, I chopped them up and froze them.    Worked like  a charm and I think they were sweeter coming out of the freezer than fresh.

Notes:  I started with this recipe from Food.com.   The original recipe called for 2 cups of honey, but unless you're using really, really mild honey [not easily available anywhere], the honey totally takes over the flavor.  I wanted fig jam, not fig flavored honey.   So, here's what I did:



Fig, Honey and Walnut Jam
www.rurification.com
3 cups chopped figs [About 40 Chicago Hardy figs, stems removed]
1 cup honey
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:
Put figs, lemon juice and honey in a wide bottom saucepan.   Bring to boil, turn down the heat and simmer until thick.  45 minutes or so.   I cooked until it started sheeting off the spatula.  Add walnuts and simmer for another 15 minutes or so.   Put in jars with clean lids.  Store in refrigerator.  Yield: 2 pints.

[I processed my jars of jam for 10 minutes to can it, but I'm not a canning expert so this is me not telling you what to do, but only what I did.]

Autumn Olive [Elaeagnus umbellata] Jam

This year I've had a bumper crop of autumn olives.   We have several wild trees and the one across the way is huge and covered with berries.  They're good this year.   Even the dog will strip ripe berries from the lowest branches.  

With all that abundance, I thought you might like a quick list of the lovely jams you can make with these wonderful berries.

Elaeagnus Raspberry Jam [my favorite!]

Elaeagnus Peach Jam

Elaeagnus Apple Jam

Elaeagnus Orange Ginger Jam

Once you've made the jam, here's a great recipe for Eric's Jam Bars.  Delish!

And if you're wondering what the heck autumn olives are in the first place, check out this post.

Elderberry Jelly

They're finally ripe!   I've been waiting on elderberries since they first put out new leaves in the spring.   This year our bush was loaded with flowers and I've been watching the berries slowly ripen for months.

I've been gathering the berries off the stems and putting them right in the freezer so when I have enough I can make jam.   On Friday, my neighbor said I could come pick off her place, too, so I have loads!

When they were all stripped, I had 10 cups of berries.   I added 4 cups of water and boiled.  After I strained it, I had 5 1/2 cups of juice and I followed this recipe here:  http://rurification.blogspot.com/2012/09/elderberry-jelly.html

Mostly.  

I used 1 Tablespoon pectin per cup of juice.  And for sweetening, I used 1 cup of honey from my very own bees [scavenged from damaged comb from last winter] and 1 cup sugar.    Perfect.

What kinds of jam and jelly are you making this year?

Spaghetti Sauce Season

Am I the only one whose kitchen is a total disaster area when I'm doing major canning?

Right now, I've got three large pots of tomatoes, squash, onions and garlic on the stove, simmering down into spaghetti sauce.   There is juice and seeds all over the table, the countertops and floor.  There is burnt schmutz all over the pots and stove and spatters on everything close by.

It's inelegant, but real. [#marthastewart'sstaffdoesn'tlivehere]  And will be real tasty, too, in a few hours.  

Apple Season

It's apple season!    Here are a few things we are doing and have done with apples.   I hope you get a chance to try a few of them.

Apple Pie Filling
Apple Pear Pie Filling
Apple Slices - canned
Apple Dumplings
Apple Tart
April's Apple Slices [Slab Pie]
Green Tomato/Apple Crisp 
Apple Pear Maple Jam
Autumn Berry [Autumn Olive/Elaeagnus] Apple Jam




One bushel of apples makes about 21 quarts of apple pie filling or canned apple slices.   I've got one bushel done [pie filling] and one more coming [canned apple slices].   Our pantry is overloaded this year, which is both a blessing and a curse.   I'm focusing on the blessing part. 

Ricotta Tart with Honey Cinnamon Glazed Figs

I have figs!

Two years ago I planted a Chicago Hardy fig tree.   In November.   Right before that nuclear winter we had that lasted forever - you know, the one with the Polar Vortex from hell. 

That winter.

And the next spring, the fig came up anyway.  So here's my shout out to Stark Bros where I got the fig and where I get a lot of my fruit trees/plants.   Great stock and they'll replace if the plants don't make it a year. 

The plant died back to the ground, but that spring the fig bore 3 whole figs, which got the size of marbles and then fell off before they ripened.   

Last winter the fig died back again all the way to the ground, but popped up this spring when the ground warmed up.   I have dozens of tiny figs along the branches.    And one ripe one.

The figs get suddenly larger when they ripen, then they turn that color and droop.  And when they are ripe, I will make this tart.  Again.  I made this recipe up myself.   It is delicious.   I plan on eating it several more times this season.

Because I have figs.

 Ricotta Tart with Honey Cinnamon Glazed Figs
www.rurification.com

1 dozen or so very ripe figs [California Mission are fine]
1 lb ricotta cheese
1/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon for the filling + 1/4 tsp more cinnamon for the glaze
1/4 cup honey
 Your favorite pie or tart crust for bottom of tart/pie plate.

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 350.  Make the crust and put it in the bottom of a tart or pie plate.

Filling:  Mix the ricotta, eggs, sugar, vanilla and 1/4 tsp cinnamon well.   Put into pie crust.

Topping:  Wash and slice the figs in half.   Arrange the figs cut side up around the top of the filling, fat ends out, skinny ends pointing to the center.

Glaze.   Heat the honey and 1/4 tsp cinnamon in the microwave for 30 seconds.   Mix it as well as you can [it won't want to mix].   Pour/spread glaze evenly on all figs and around the top of the tart. [If you LOVE this glaze, feel free to make more.   It's good when it's baked and oozing all over the place.]

Bake 60 minutes.   Cool.    Delicious at room temp or chilled. 

Sweet Cherry Chutney

One of my favorite things of all is Peach Chutney.   Lily and I can go through a jar ourselves.  It's lovely with sliced apples and brie.   Or poured over pork chops and slow cooked.  I like it with 2 tsps of red pepper flakes, which gives it just enough heat, but not too much for me.   You can add more or less to taste.

I had a few bags of sweet cherries left and decided to try my favorite chutney recipe with cherries instead of peaches.    It was lovely!   Here's what I did.

Sweet Cherry Chutney
www.rurification.com

• 8 Cups pitted sweet cherries, sliced in half
• 2 T mustard seeds
• 1 tsp - T red pepper flakes  [I like 2 tsp]
• 2 Cups sugar
• 1/2 Cup white wine vinegar [I use my own homemade white wine vinegar]
• 1/4 Cup crystallized ginger, chopped up [That's a handful of ginger pieces, if you don't want to cram it into a cup measure.]
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 Cup raisins 

Combine ingredients and cook down until enough liquid boils off that you can drag a spoon/spatula across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a dry place for a second before the juices flow again.   Take your time.    The cherries were pretty juicy, so I let it cook on low, with a simmering bubble, for a couple of hours. 


For more recipes as easy as these, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Sweet Cherry Vanilla Jam

This year I added 20 lbs of sweet cherries to my fruit order and was thrilled at how fabulous they were.   Sweet cherries travel much better than sour cherries [which often arrive brown and running with juice, though delicious.]  Sweet cherries store well, stay firm and the extra few days gave us time to finish the peaches, which arrived first, and deal with the sour cherries and berries.   It was a very busy couple of weeks.   I washed the sweet cherries and put them in ziplocks stacked flat in the fridge.   It was easy to grab a bag in the morning, set it out and I confess we ate many many of those cherries fresh before I had a chance to make anything with them.

But I did make a couple of things with them and the first on the list was a batch or two [or three] of Sweet Cherry Vanilla Jam.  

It. Was. Heaven.   Like my favorite clafouti without the custard.    Soooo good.   Make some of this.  [Put it on chocolate cake.   Or just eat it with a spoon right out of the jar.]

Sweet Cherry Vanilla Jam
www.rurification.com

4 cups pitted sweet cherries, cut in half
1 cup water
1 vanilla bean, cut in half and then sliced open lengthwise
1/2 cup low sugar pectin [Dutch Gel All Natural Lite is my favorite]
1 cup sugar

Put the cherries, water, vanilla and pectin in a large pot.   Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  When the jam reaches a hard boil [that bubbles like crazy even when you're stirring constantly], time it for 1 minute.    Add the sugar, stir constantly and return it to a hard boil.   Time it for one minute.   Turn off the heat, ladle into jars.   We process the jam in 1/2 pint jars for 15 minutes.   Yield:  2.5 - 3 pints.

For more recipes as easy as these, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Cherry Pie Filling with Perma Flo

Once again, I attempted to make cherry pie filling with Perma Flo and this year it totally worked!

We pitted the cherries and then let them sit while we made the Mixed Berry Pie Filling I told you about in the last post.   The juices flowed.   I added a bit extra perma flo to compensate.  This year the bottles are packed with fruit and the sauce is perfectly thick.   So delicious!


Sour Cherry Pie Filling with Perma Flo
www.rurification.com

1 gallon sour cherries, pitted
6 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups Perma Flo

Mix the sugar and the Perma Flo well in a bowl.   Put the cherries and all their juice in a large pot.  Mix in the sugar/Perma Flo combination and stir well.   Bring to a boil stirring constantly.   The sauce will become clear when it reaches the boil.   Make sure it boils!   As you're stirring, watch for stray pits and pull them out with a spoon.  Once the filling is boiling, put it in jars.   We processed ours for 30 minutes.

Yield:  5-6 quarts of pie filling.

Berry Pie Filling with Perma-Flo

We've been so busy this summer. It seems that all the fruit got ready at once. Within a week, we had bushels of peaches, cherries, blueberries and raspberries. So much goodness all at one time! I got together with one of my sisters for a day and we blasted out dozens of quarts of pie fillings. Peach Vanilla, Spiced Peach, Sour Cherry, Mixed Berry.... So, so delicious. One of the tricks of making berry pie fillings for canning is making sure that everything is heated enough, but that the berries aren't stirred so much that they are completely broken down in the process. Not to worry, I had a plan. Heat 1/4 of the berries with water, smash them to bits for as much juice as possible, then add the perma-flo and make the sauce. Once the sauce was done, then add the berries and heat through stirring gently. Bring back to a boil and can. It worked perfectly!!  

Berry Pie Filling with Perma-Flo
www.rurification.com

1 gallon red raspberries and black raspberries mixed
1 quart water
2 cups sugar
1 cup Perma Flo

Mix the sugar and Perma Flo and set aside.   Put the water and 1 quart of the berries in a large pot and smash the berries with a potato masher to release the juice.   Add the sugar and Perma Flo and stir well.   Heat the mixture until it boils, stirring constantly.   When it boils, it will become clear and thick.   When the sauce is clear and bubbling, add the rest of the berries and fold them gently in.  You don't want to break them all up.   Once the mix is boiling again, it's ready to go into the jars.

We processed the jars for 30 minutes for canning.

Yeild: 4-5 quarts of pie filling.

Chocolate Jams

Happy Valentine's Day!    We're whipping up a quick batch of Chocolate Raspberry Jam to have with our treats today and it reminded me that it's time to do a quick review of the Chocolate Jams that I've done on the blog.   

You can make any fruit jam into a chocolate jam.  We've used a few different methods.  The easiest is to heat up 8 oz or so of your favorite fruit jam and then stir in 1/3 cup of chocolate chips until they're all melted.  





Here are the jams we've loved.

• Chocolate Cherry Jam
• Chocolate Orange Jam
• Chocolate Pear Ginger Jam
• Chocolate Raspberry Jam

I hope you get a chance to try one this weekend. Enjoy!  

Marmalade Recipe Roundup

It's Februrary and that means it's marmalade season.   I love marmalade.  Nothing is as beautiful this time of year as a jar of citrusy sunshine.

I love marmalade on toast.   Also, on pancakes.  Also, on Blueberry Steel Cut Oats with yogurt.  Also, on brownies.   Also, on ice cream.    Also, on brownies with ice cream.



I love marmalade!  

Here are a few tips and recipes to get you started.   

• Marmalade Tools
• Mixed Fruit Marmalade
• Four Fruit Marmalade
• Rhubarb Marmalade
• Honey Vanilla Orange Marmalade
• Blood Orange Marmalade
• Old Fashioned, Southern Style Lemon Pumpkin Pickle [Marmalade]
• Chocolate Orange Marmalade

And once you have the jam made, here are some fabulous things you can do with it!

Orange Marmalade Cranberry Jammy Oatcakes

Eric's Jam Bars

Blintzes


Want the recipe for these Marmalades and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

Rabbit Stew

This is the time of year I see a lot of rabbit damage on our trees and on any exposed greens tucked in the corners of the beds. We are lucky enough to have a neighbor who hunts the multitude of cottontail rabbits that threaten to eat my entire garden and reduce my fruit trees to barkless sticks.

The neighbor and his buddy shoot with muzzle loaders – one uses an antique musket. When they shoot, it sounds like cannon fire instead of gunshot. They bring a rabbit dog [beagle] and they spend a happy afternoon roaming the brush on our place scaring out the rabbits. This past weekend they scored four rabbits. They skinned and prepped them and then brought us two of them to eat. We love rabbit stew!

We brine it overnight and then slow cook it all day the next day. Here are the details.

Rabbit Stew
www.rurification.com

Brine [Enough for 1-3 rabbits]
1 rabbit, skinned and cut into parts [4 legs and the back section]
3 cups water
1/3 cup salt
2 garlic cloves
1 bay leaf

Coating [Enough for 1 rabbit. Multiply for more rabbits]
Ground pepper [a few grinds. More if you love pepper]
½ cup flour
2 teaspoons dried thyme

Stew [Enough for 1 rabbit. Multiply for more rabbits.]
Bacon grease or butter
3-6 mushrooms [or more]
1 onion
1 quart water
3 cubes chicken bouillon

Cooking directions:

Day 1: Brining
Mix the brine and soak the rabbit pieces in it overnight. That is enough brine for 1-3 rabbits. Keep it in the fridge.  Discard when finished.  Do not use the brine to cook with; it's way too salty.


Day 2: Stewing
Cut up the mushrooms and brown them in a large skillet with some of the butter or bacon grease.

While they are cooking, make the coating. Mix the flour, pepper and thyme in a dish. Coat the meat on all sides.


When the mushrooms are done, put them in the crockpot and brown the rabbit with more grease in the skillet. You’re not trying to cook it all the way, just brown it.

While the rabbit is cooking, slice up the onion and drop it in the crockpot.

When the rabbit is browned, put it in the crockpot with the bouillon cubes.

Pour the water into the skillet to deglaze and get the crispies all out of the pan. After a couple of minutes, even the really stuck ones will come right off the pan. Once they’re soft, scrape the water and everything into the crockpot.

Cook on high for 6-8 hours. We have also cooked this in a cast iron pot on the stove all day.

Once the meat is done, decide if the gravy is thick enough. You can whisk more flour in if you need to thicken it up. OR, you can drop in some noodles or rice and let them soak up the gravy as they cook.

You can drop some veg in there for the last hour if you like – chopped carrots, peas, potatoes, etc.

Nota Bene: If your hunters are using shotguns, make sure you watch for shot pellets in every bite. You don’t want to chip a tooth.

Winter Jams

This is the time of year we're really hitting the jam cupboard.    During the holidays, mostly I use the jams with cheese.    With the wide variety of frozen fruit available in the grocery stores, you can probably make one of these pretty easily. [You can use canned fruit, too!]

Here are some of our favorites.

Chocolate Jams are great over ice cream, pound cake, yogurt, cheese cake, brownies, etc.  

• Raspberry Chocolate Jam
• Chocolate Cherry Jam
• Chocolate Orange Jam

Marmalades are fabulous over all of the above, plus as a meat glaze - ham, chicken, pork chops.  Put some in a crockpot with some of those frozen meatballs for a fabulous appetizer.  Here is everything you need to know about making marmalade   Now is citrus season, so you've got a great excuse to try something new, like blood oranges!

Pears are still easy to find and this  Pear Ginger Jam is to die for.   You can make it with either fresh pears that you cook until soft or canned pears.   

This jam is great on yogurt!  Or, try it with a cheese plate.  I love it with manchego or brie.   Mmmmm.

Savory jams are lovely with cheese trays.   I love this Onion Bacon Garlic Jam with sliced apples or pears and gouda.  [Or swiss,  or manchego,  or a fresh mozzarella...]  Don't skimp on the bacon.  Add as much as you want.

All those jams are fabulous, but my all time favorite is this Peach Chutney.  I eat it on apples and pears.  On meat. On sandwiches.  With a spoon, by itself.  On cream cheese.  On any other cheese, especially brie.

In a baked brie - To. Die. For.  And it's easy.  Pour jam on a brie. Wrap the brie in a puff pastry and bake on 475 until golden.  Serve warm.


Note:  Most any jam is good in a baked brie:  Raspberry, Apricot, Cherry, Marmalade, etc...

I hope I've inspired you to make a little jam this holiday season.  Let me know if you try some.  Have a wonderful week!

For more jam recipes as easy as these, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Let the Festivities Begin!

It's party time here at Rurification central.  We started the party on Sunday.  Solstice was Sunday.  I'm so glad the days are getting longer.  That extra 15 seconds of light this morning really made a difference in my day.

Lily's birthday is today.   Her birthday cake of choice is this lovely Sticky Toffee Pudding.   Yum!

Tomorrow, we'll be making Yule Bread and Chai. 

Also probably a Cream Cheese Jam Cake. Instead of the pumpkin in that recipe, sub out a jar of your favorite jam or cranberry sauce.    Heavenly!

Happy Holidays!

Mushroom Potato Soup

I was hungry for my Zuppa Toscana and then found out I didn't have any sausage.   You just can't have Zuppa Toscana without sausage.  You can maybe pull off some zuppa, but it just won't be Toscana. 

So I improvised.

And made some really terrific Mushroom Potato Soup instead.   I'm warning you ahead of time that this is not a fast soup.   It takes time.   Time and butter.  Don't skimp on either.   The trick here is to let the onion and mushroom actually brown in the pans. 

Yes, pans.    It'll be worth it.

Robin's Mushroom Potato Soup
www.rurification.com

1 lb mushrooms, cut in half and then sliced up.
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 onion, diced
2 more tablespoons butter
1 tsp salt
5 small potatoes, peeled and diced
6 cups of broth [I used chicken]
2 chicken bouillon cubes or the equivalent
1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup cream [optional]

Brown the mushrooms with 2 T butter and 1/2 tsp of the salt on medium heat in a large skillet.   In a soup pot, brown the onions on medium heat in the rest of the butter and the salt.   When the onions are brown, add the broth and the potatoes.  Bring to a boil and cook the potatoes until fork tender.  When the mushrooms are brown, add the flour and 1 cup of the stock out of the potato pot. Stir around to make a gravy.  Add the mushrooms to the rest of the soup.   Stir well and simmer until it thickens a bit.   Optional:  If you want a creamy potato version, add 1/2 cup cream. 

This is some great soup! 

[Sorry about the photo quality.  It's December.  It's dark.]