I have always been a soup-and-salad-type of girl. I love soup, as in I could (and do) eat it all year round! I realize that while not everyone may enjoy soup all year long, most of us can enjoy a good bowl of soup in these colder months. Here are several of my favorite soup recipes. These have been big hits, not just in my family, but also to most everyone I have served them too. Since soup is so easy to throw in a pot and let simmer, it is often my fall back-up option when entertaining—and these recipes have been real crowd pleasers!
Hot Sausage Soup
18 oz. (1 pkg.) hot sausage links (I like Uncle Charley’s)
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
1-32 oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 cans great northern beans
1 pkg. of spinach
Dash of hot sauce
1 green pepper
Water
Oil
Salt and pepper
You can make this either on a stovetop or in a crockpot. If you decide to make it in a crockpot, you do not have to brown the meat, onions and pepper beforehand, but be sure to cook for about 6-8 hours if this is what you choose. Also, beware the onions and green pepper will have a slightly softer taste, however I hardly ever take the time to cook my onion and pepper ahead of time and I have had no complaints.
Slice sausages links and brown in a pan over medium/low heat. While the meat is browning, slice onions and green pepper and once sausage is mostly brown, add in the onion, green pepper, and garlic. Cook until onion and pepper are soft and sausage is thoroughly browned. Add the crushed tomatoes and 32 ounces of water to your cooking pot of choice. Rinse and add one can of beans. Rinse the other can of beans and the purée(?) before adding. This will thicken your soup. Add sausage, onions, green pepper, and garlic from pan. Add a touch of salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Cook for 1.5 hours on stove top or longer if using a crockpot. Stir occasionally. After 1.5 hours add the spinach and cook another 15-20 minutes until spinach is wilted. Then, dish up and enjoy!
Garlic bread, croutons, and shredded cheddar cheese go great with this!
Broccoli Cheese Soup
2 Tbs. butter
1 medium onion
6 cups water
6 chicken bouillon cubes
8 oz. of rice
2-10 oz. pkgs. of chopped broccoli
½ tsp garlic powder
6 cups milk
1 lb. Velveeta cheese
Sauté onion for 3 minutes, until tender. Add water and bouillon cubes and bring to a boil. Add broccoli and garlic and cook for about 5 minutes, or until broccoli pierces easily with a fork. Cube cheese. Reduce heat and add milk and cheese and stir until dissolved.
This is soup—grandma always said cook low and slow so the flavor can really come to strength and this is so true! You can cook for a short amount of time or several hours. The important thing is about 20-30 minutes before you finish cooking the soup, add the rice and the salt. You want to cook it long enough that the rice will soften, but not so long that it will become mushy.
Considerations and Alternatives:
Instead of using rice, you can use a small noodle such as Acini de Pepe. I prefer rice because it is gluten free but either will do.
Be sure the water and bullion are simmering and not boiling when you add your milk and cheese; otherwise, rather than becoming creamy your milk will separate which, although it will still taste good, it will not look pretty!
Tomato Pepper Jack Cheese Soup
2 cans (or one family-size can) of tomato soup
14.5 oz. (1 can) of diced tomatoes
1.5 cups of milk
1 block of pepper jack cheese
4 oz. of cream cheese
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. basil
½ tsp. garlic powder
Dash of hot sauce
Shake of crushed red peppers, if you like spice!
Use a food processor to shred the block of pepper jack cheese into tiny pieces. Then add the diced tomatoes* and process in a food processor until creamed. Cube cream cheese. Add all ingredients to a crockpot and cook on high for 3-3.5 hours, or longer on low. Stir occasionally.
Garnish with croutons, cheese, or serve with garlic bread.
*You do not have to process the tomatoes but I prefer the more creamy texture
There you are! These are three of my favorite cold weather recipes. I hope you enjoy them as much as my family and friends do! I’d love to hear what are some of your favorite soups and cold weather recipes.
12 We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves.(A) When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.
2 Corinthians 10:12 NIV
Do you ever think it would be easier to be completely happy if you lived in a bubble—similar to Little House on the Prairie where their goal was to build a house in the middle of open acres where they wouldn’t have many neighbors. I think it would be easier to be content and sincerely grateful if I were in the middle of a wide open prairie with no neighbors in sight with whom to compare myself.
When I focus on all the blessings God has given me, I find it easier to be content when I am not comparing my life to others. When I am spending more time at home and less time on social media, it is easier for me to not compare myself to others.
I came across a quote by Charles de Montesquieu the other day. The quote was this: “If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think they’re happier than they are.” It is not enough for us to just be happy; we don’t want just a nice house, or a comfortable income, or maybe a vacation each year. No, we want it all—plus some. We not only want a nice house, we want it to be slightly nicer than that of our peers. We want a slightly greater income than those around us. We want to go on vacation and have it be a little fancier than others around us. We want it all—plus.
We get so focused on looking at what others have that we don’t stop to appreciate what all we have been blessed with. Who do we think we are to tell God that we appreciate His blessings but could He bless us just a little bit more? The tragedy of this is that these same people to whom we are comparing ourselves are probably doing the same thing—comparing their lives to ours! While we sit comparing ourselves to each other, we totally overlook the unique blessings that God has showered upon us.
We have seen examples of this kind of thing in the Bible too. Remember King David? He was, as I said, King. He was ruling God’s Chosen People. He had wealth, prestige, and power. He had beautiful wives. But . . . he didn’t have Bathsheba who was the wife of another man—Uriah. Oh he got her—but he sacrificed a lot. When Bathsheba conceived a child, he ended up basically having Uriah killed. Sadly, this child died. There was a wedge now in David’s relationship with God until he repented. He lost his peace of mind. He lost his integrity. And, the Bible says, the sword never departed from his house. That is a steep price. All because he found something (or someone) he didn’t have and on impulse decided he needed it. Oh what needless pain was caused because David stopped focusing on all he had been blessed with and instead craved what Uriah had. (Read the full story at II Samuel 11 and 12.)
Why do we feel the need to compare our blessings with the blessings of others? We spend so much more time comparing our blessings than we do thinking about the Giver of those blessings. What God must think when He sees us not being grateful simply because He didn’t bless us in the same way that He blessed others in our lives!
It is so easy to get distracted with the things of this earth—especially the things we want but do not yet possess. We can spend our days being jealous and envious, comparing ourselves with others, or we can carry our list of wants and needs before God and then release them to Him, trusting that He is able to do infinitely more than we could ever imagine but He will do only what is best for us.
The seasons are starting to change—are you itching to change some of your seasonal decor? At this time of year, I always get the bug to switch things up. I enjoy the summer months so much and am focused on being outside that I let the decor in my house rest. But after a few months, I am ready for a change!
The beauty of seasonal decor is that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel and totally switch everything for the upcoming season—we can simply switch out a few elements or maybe just a few minor pieces. Take your table centerpiece for example: do you totally strip it down and redo it, or do you just switch out some of the elements? I used to try to make major decor changes just about every season and then I realized that (1) I definitely had a favorite way of doing things, and (2) it was silly to keep reinventing the wheel. Yes, it can be fun to do a total overhaul and switch everything but other times it is just as good of an option to switch out seasonal elements.
I have had the same centerpiece for about a year now. While I do different variations of it, it is the same base each time. For me this includes: the base which is a shallow wooden box, my candlesticks, and my twine balls. Then I switch out the seasonal elements.
Last fall I added little pumpkins and twinkle lights to my centerpiece. I also added the pinecones as they give my centerpieces a little more woodsy, fall-like feel.
This is a picture of my centerpiece at Christmas. I love sprinkling in the mini ornaments to add some sparkle and shine to my centerpiece. Again, the pinecones make it feel more like winter.
After the holidays, I usually just strip down my centerpiece to just the twinkle lights, pinecones, and twine balls. It’s simple and it reflects the world outside my windows. And I let it remain like that until spring.
This is a picture of my Easter-style centerpiece. By adding the faux Easter eggs, it gives it just enough of a touch of spring.
And that takes you through a year in the life of my centerpieces!
That is what I do for my centerpieces, but the same principle applies to other decor in your home. Instead of feeling like you need to replace everything, can you swap a candle on a pillar for a pumpkin in the fall, or insert a garland of sparkling greenery at Christmas?
Here are some seasonal accent items to keep in mind:
In the winter, think about the world outside—nature is dormant and there is much more brown than in other seasons. You can add a touch of evergreen or even a sparkly branch or two, but also think: pinecones, twine balls, bar candles, plain branches, and even deer sheds (antlers).
In the spring, keep a base of twine balls and pinecones and consider adding some faux eggs prior to Easter, some dried flowers, or accent balls that correlate with the color you have in your home.
In the summer, you can still have your base of twine balls and even pinecones, but also add some flowers—faux, dried, or real, sea shells, greenery from outside, plants and even fresh cut branches!
For fall, keep your twine ball base along with the pinecones and consider adding: acorns, baby pumpkins, strands of wheat, and twinkle lights.
Christmas offers a lot of options! You can add ornaments, holly branches, glitter greenery, angels, or even a manger scene and, of course, the twinkle lights.
I hope this gives you some inspiration for how you can switch up your decor without the headache of redoing everything! A few little touches can completely change the feel of your decor. If you want to totally redo your decor, go for it! But if you just want to add a seasonal touch and change the feel, you don’t have to go crazy! Look at your decor and see where you could add a few seasonal elements. Just have fun playing!
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:20-21 NIV
I was given a box of letters and other miscellaneous items from my grandparents’ childhood and their young adult lives. There were letters that grandpa wrote to grandma while they were dating and letters from grandma’s family to her at school. As I was sorting through these letters, I came across one in particular that I stopped to read. There were two sheets of paper and each paragraph was written by a different member of her family telling the current news about themselves. Her sister wrote of the cut on her hand which was why her writing was particularly messy; her other sister wrote about how it was too icy to go into town so they had been cooped up inside, and her father wrote that he was milking Old Bessie and that he missed my her [my grandma’s] help! These were words on a page but they weren’t just words contained in these letters. These letters held collected moments—remembered days—snapshots of days from a bygone era—they were stories of lives lived.
In with all these letters were also old photographs: family portraits, snapshots, and school photos. I saw my grandfather grow from a boy, to a young man, to an adult, to the grandfatherly, old man I knew and loved so dearly. I have pictures of him as a farm boy with his best cow in the 1940s, as a young business man standing next to my grandmother, and pictures of him holding us grandkids. All of these things are the paraphernalia of a life gone by—a letter, a photo, a random token from a vacation. These everyday things are the artifacts left in one’s wake.
And yet they are not all the things, they are the physical reminders of a life on earth, but there are the nontangible and much more valuable remnants too. The memories of my grandfather teaching me to ride a bike, grandma teaching me her cooking skills, and memories of her hospitable nature to anyone who crossed her doorstep. There are the memories of weekly trips to the library, how they were always encouraging me to read, setting an example in front of me. These are the things I remember. All of these things and so much more are the legacy of my grandparents to me.
We will all leave behind a legacy when we are gone. Jesus did. He implored His disciples to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. He left an unparalleled legacy of loving others. Even nonbelievers agree with this. Our possessions will remain on this earth, our souls will leave our bodies, and yet a legacy will remain. Jesus told the young lawyer to sell all he had to the poor, because his legacy was not in his possessions but in his heart. What is in our hearts? It is easy to shake our heads at the young lawyer who went away sad because he was very wealthy, but do we acknowledge our own follies and foolishness? We place so much value in things—it’s hard not to. But what of the value of memories we leave with the ones we love? What will they remember about us?
What about the intangible in our lives? The people in our lives, are we loving them well? The spiritual gifts we’ve been given, are we utilizing them well? We will leave behind remnants of these gifts as well, not tangible as an old letter or photograph, but a snapshot nonetheless of our life. The base truth is that we do need things in this life. Money is useful, a house keeps us comfortable and insulated from the elements, but these too are just things. We can look at another biblical figure, Simon Peter who, though he had many foibles, ultimately got it right, dedicating his life to following Christ.
We will leave others behind and they will remember who we were. What we did for a living won’t necessarily be remembered as much. Some of these people will be responsible for going through the memorabilia of our lives. Some will go through the stacks of memories we have left imprinted on their minds. Will they shake their heads at us like we do the young lawyer in the Bible or will they remember us like Simon Peter whose antics we laugh at but ultimately admire because he got it right. Are we getting it right?
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It is October here in Pennsylvania—one of the most beautiful times of the year. The leaves reach their peak color turning hues of bright red, vibrant orange, and golden yellow. The days are mild, blending into crisp evenings. The natural world sheds its elaborate outer skin bearing the bones beneath; the tree branches and the spent stalks of flowers will soon glisten in their frost-coated glory.
I am always hit with a touch of nostalgia at this time of year, an almost melancholic air settles over me but not in a bad way. I want to drink in every golden drop of sunshine and store it away within me for the gray days that lie ahead. I want to walk through corn mazes and remember past harvests when life would then slow down. This is a time of year that makes me want to slow down and cocoon myself indoors—curled up before a crackling fire with a delectable cup of tea or hot chocolate and lose myself in a captivating read. I want to light candles, pull out throws and blankets, and maybe even play a game of backgammon on the living room floor. These things make me feel more warm and cozy rather than sad and empty. It is an awareness that time is passing, and will continue to pass, but for a short while it seems to slow slightly, allowing us to take a moment to breathe it in—if we are watching for it.
What a wonderful time of year to observe the slowing of the natural world. How much more wonderful when we allow ourselves to bask in the slowness of the season. It is restorative to slow down with the season and reemerge rested and ready to embrace a new season. It wasn’t so long ago that we worked furiously in spring and summer; we would started to unwind after a busy harvest season, and then be stilled in winter. How did it happen that every season became as busy as the one before it and the one after? We were made to have busy seasons bursting with life and activity and to have slow seasons; but, when did we decide that we could thrive without pausing to notice that change is happening, that we don’t need to unwind, that we don’t need to rest? What do we gain, truly, by pushing and forcing every season to be the same? Perhaps a better question is how much do we miss by pushing through the seasons of our lives, acting as if each season is uniform.
We rush and we hustle, forgetting that rest is not superfluous. We need time to feel the seasons, both in the natural world and in our personal worlds as well. We need space and time to process life, to relax, to reflect, and to be filled and inspired for the next season. We need time to feel the weight of the seasons, to evaluate whether this is really the life we want to live and are meant to be living. For what is our life worth if we get to the end only to realize that this is not the life we wanted to live and realize that we have used our time unwisely, without taking the time to slow down and consider the seasons of life—and now there is no time to change course.
This autumn, whatever autumn may look like for you, I encourage you to slow down, rest up, and absorb all the delightful scents and occasions this season has to offer. Let’s slow down and take advantage of opportunities in which precious memories can be created with the special people in our lives so that when we get to the end we will be able to reminisce and take comfort in those memories. May we remember that the seasons will come and go, the world will keep turning, but there is no promise that we will be here to enjoy it “next year,” so let’s focus on enjoying today.
