Cooking up a Storm

This morning after writing on my blog about my birthday package I decided to make a big pot of hamburg soup. I will bring a container to my parents and also some to my auntie.  For my soup I used a 46 oz. can of vegetable tomato juice, sliced green cabbage, onions, celery, diced canned tomatoes,  french style green beans, carrots, 1 clove crushed garlic, zucchini, mushroom, cannelli beans, 93% lean hamburger, salt and pepper and a little water. This soup doesn't have a lot of calories.

soup and homemade French bread slice

While the soup was cooking, I decided to try making a quick and easy French bread recipe from Pinterest

I had a new bag of King Arthur flour and dry yeast on hand. I have a French bread baking tube somewhere buried in the back of the kitchen cabinets, but I couldn't put my hands on it. I bought it many years ago and never used it. Anyway, the bread was easy to make, but it flattened out on the pan instead of staying nice and high. I baked the bread about 5 minutes longer than the recipe called for, but I think I could have given it a few more minutes of baking time. When the bread cooled slightly, I cut a piece and slathered butter on it, and it tastes good. I got 2 big loaves out of the batch.

While the bread was baking and the soup simmering, I took out 4 bags of quahogs from the freezer. I didn't realize I had so many put away. Again, thanks to my son's friend, Larry.

I rinsed them quahogs off well, put them in a 6 quart colander and started shucking away. The quahogs open easily when frozen  solid.

6 quart pyrex bowl filled with frozen quahogs. Now, I have to chop the quahogs and make the stuffing. When I finished I got two jelly roll sheet pans of stuffed quahogs. I ran out of bread, and so with the leftover stuffed quahogs, I will make some more in the next day or two and freeze those.

video I found on the internet..showing step by step process

Elaine