Sunday Cooking: Every Pot in the House

This week's cooking didn't seem overly ambitious when I started. Chicken noodle soup, quiche, roasted Brussels sprouts, and some stuffed potatoes.

Somehow I ended up using every pot in the house, and many of them twice. I cooked for over 6 hours. I've made Thanksgiving dinners in less time!

I started early in the morning with the soup. It turned out to be the easiest to make, since everything stayed in my one stockpot. This recipe was very good, but in future variations I will a) season the chicken before I add it to boil, and b) add salt way, way earlier. I ended up having to put in much more than I normally would have, and it still was pretty bland until I added some smoky seasoned salt.



There is about an hour-long period while the chicken (on the bone) simmers in the pot, so during then I cooked bacon in the oven (2 jelly roll pans) and carmelized thinly-sliced onions (julienne slicer and small saute pan).

Took the chicken out of the pot, and added egg noodles to boil. Shredded the chicken off the bone. Started the salt seasoning and put the chicken back into the soup. Let simmer for a while longer while I washed more dishes.

Took a break. For several hours.

Returned to kitchen and put potatoes and sweet potatoes in the oven to bake for an hour. Hubby prepped the Brussels sprouts for roasting while I sauteed minced garlic and chopped broccoli rabe. Put that aside, put the sprouts in the oven, and wasted a good 10 minutes trying to get all the eggshell pieces out of the eggs I was cracking for the quiche. (Hubby laughed at my first attempt, and nudged me aside so he could crack them for me. He got even more eggshells in it than I did! Is it something about cagefree brown eggs that makes them shatter into a million pieces instead of one clean crack? It's ridiculous.)



Crushed the crispy bacon into bits. Mixed the eggs with some of the onions, some bacon, Mural of Flavor seasoning, and crumbled goat cheese. Put the rabe into the bottom of a pie shell, poured the egg mixture over it, and topped with the rest of the carmelized onion rings.

Put into oven with the potatoes and sprouts. Tossed the sprouts to prevent burning. Added stock and more seasoning to the soup and brought back to a boil, then simmered again. The taste finally came together so I turned off the heat and served a bowl to each of us.

Crashed in a chair and ate soup until it was time to take out the sprouts. Crashed again until the quiche was done. Washed more dishes until it was time for the potatoes.



Cut the potatoes in half. While they cooled, did yet another round of dishes so I could re-use the large saute pan. Minced a shallot, sauteed it in butter along with the spinach. Set aside. Scooped the potato out the skin (had to do two separate bowls of it because I was making sweet potatoes for me and regular baking potatoes for Hubby), mashed it with sour cream and cream cheese. Added in the spinach. Drizzled the skins in olive oil and baked them for a few more minutes to get crispier. Spooned the potato mixture back into the skins and topped with shredded parmesan cheese (not sure why they are considered "healthy" LOL but they will be tasty!).



Collapsed on recliner while the potatoes baked one more time until the tops were browned. Ate a slice of quiche. Took the potatoes out and let them cool. Collapsed again and wrote this entry. Ate Brussels sprouts and a sweet potato half.



Loaded everything up into storage containers and refrigerated. We will be eating well this week, but it was not easy! Next time, I am going to read the recipes closer before I start putting them together; these were just too many steps for the potatoes, for instance. And the quiche! That one was all my own fault; I don't have a recipe for that, I just pick the combo I feel like making that week. This particular one required me to cook all the ingredients separately before I mixed them in the quiche. That was too much.

But it is all delicious. :)