Italian Wedding Soup

In our house, we do theme nights twice a week - Wednesday night is take out night and Sunday is "Soup Sunday".

For the last few weeks we've been working through the turkey soup I made at Thanksgiving. Thanks to a rotisserie chicken I picked up, we were able to make some homemade chicken broth and get about 3 weeks out of the turkey soup!

My favorite soup (besides lobster bisque) is Italian Wedding. The mixture of meatballs, pasta, spinach... it just doesn't get any better that that! I've never made it from scratch, but I found an awesome recipe over on Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice. I tweaked it a little and am happy to say it was one of the best soups I've ever had! I would definitely add more broth since I had to add more the next day and lost some of the flavor, but this is a super easy soup for a cold winter night!

The original recipe can be found at the link above, the one below is with my tweaks!

Meatballs:
.75 lb ground beef
1 egg
2 handfuls Italian breadcrumbs
generous sprinklings of dried oregano, parsley, basil, salt, pepper

Mix all into small balls (the size of a quarter) and set aside - they will cook in the soup

Soup:
64 ounces chicken broth
1/2 lb ditalini pasta, uncooked
1 large onion, minced
2 carrots, mined
3 large cloves garlic, mashed with a garlic press (this is important to get the correct flavor)
2/3 c frozen spinach, thawed and slightly dried
dried basil
Olive oil

In the soup pot, saute the onions and carrots in a small amount of oil until soft and brown. At this point, you can put in the mashed garlic and saute a bit - I added mine directly to the soup and it was quite strong.

Add all broth to the pot and bring to a boil. Add pasta, meatballs, and spinach. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.

To serve, I added a small amount of shredded mozzarella cheese to each bowl, but grated Parmesan would work well too!

*I didn't get any pictures this time, but next time I'll be sure to document it!

Sugar the Timneh African Grey

I apologize for the lack of posts but it's been for a good reason! We've added a new member to our family!

Sugar is an 8 year old Timneh African Grey parrot! We had been thinking about a bird for a while but since I'm not exactly a "bird person" I said it had to be the perfect bird for me. We wanted to go through a rescue - both of our dogs are rescues and the thought of giving an unwanted animal a good home just warms my heart.

We went up to Tucson, AZ on Saturday to see an African Grey named Captain but he was not the right bird for us. My husband grew up with birds but I am, most definitely, a first time bird owner. Captain needed someone a little more experienced. They brought another Grey, a Timneh - slightly smaller with a maroon backside - and she was very sweet. Sugar's owners could no longer care for her and wanted her to go to a good home. They raised her from 8 weeks old so their home was all she knew.

The first night was great, she loved us and all was calm. The next morning, she decided I was not the person for her and she let me know it! She was originally a man's bird - her old mom wasn't so sweet with her so apparently she doesn't like women very much. We're working on it though - we whistle at each other, dance with each other, she takes treats from me - I suppose slowly and surely we'll forge a relationship.

She is a beautiful bird and I have to say I'm pretty happy to have another subject to photograph!