yummy soup

it was just so pretty i had to take a picture.

this is the beef barley soup i made on tuesday. i varied it a little from holly's directions, big surprise. i never follow recipes exactly.  anyway, i doubled it to start, and since i couldn't find any quick cooking barley, i just used the regular stuff and adjusted the cooking time.  not sure how many veggies i added exactly, but i cut two carrots and threw in the rest of a bag of green beans, the rest of a bag of corn and maybe 1/3 of a bag of peas.  my first thought was that i'd saute some onions and garlic before putting in the broth - cuz everything is better w/ garlic.  but wound up IMing w/ kate and burnt my onions.  so, not wanting to cut another onion and all that, i just washed out the pot, threw in the broth and added some dried onion flakes and garlic powder and called it good.  i put half of it in a freezer bag for another day. 

i didn't take a picture of my creamy italian chicken on monday because, although it was yummy, i forgot to keep the cream cheese out of the fridge and it didn't have quite enough time to soften completely and therefore my sauce wasn't as aesthetically creamy as it should be in order to be picture worthy.

last night we had our LOADED baked potatoes, and i didn't take a picture of those either because they were just too yummy and were halfway inhaled before i even thought of taking a picture.

i'm trying a new recipe out tonight. will let you know how it goes tomorrow, but as of now i'm a little skeptical.  we'll see.