Charmin’s Favorite Hot and Sour Soup

Hot and sour soup
Yummy hot and sour soup

This recipe is so good. It makes a stock pot full and can be adapted to you tastes. As hot or as sour as you like it. Oh, and it freezes well too. You can make it vegetarian or add your favorite meat, I have made this dish with hamburger, shrimp, chicken and even turkey. I like to use fresh veggies, but you can also use frozen or canned. So spice it up and enjoy on a cold day.

1 – 32 oz container of hot and spicy V-8
32 oz of water
2 – Knorr Homestyle Concentrated Stock (beef, chicken or vegetable)
1/4 cup of vinegar (can be increased or decreased depending upon taste)
3 tablespoons of raw sugar or a substitute for a low carb version (this gives a sweet to the sour)
2 tablespoons diced garlic
1 small onion diced
2 tablespoons of Siracha Hot Chili Sauce (can be increased or decreased depending upon taste)
1 small head of cabbage (if you are short on time, buy a bag of coleslaw mix it’s already cut and has the carrots already in it.)
carrots
broccoli and/or cauliflower
water chestnuts – sliced
baby corn
mushrooms
bean sprouts
diced tomatoes
(really you can add any veggies you like, as much or as little as you like)
to make the soup heartier add any precooked meat or tofu to the mix.
Simmer until veggies reach the desired softness.

The Deviled Egg Debacle of 2011

By Charmin Foth

For those of you who know me, housewifery is not my strong suit.

Don’t get me wrong, I can clean and do laundry with the best of them, but when it comes to all things kitchen, it’s scary. I’m not saying I can’t cook. I can, and generally the things I make are edible, even tasty. I would say I’m better at baking, but that’s not entirely true either. And sharp objects, don’t even get me started. They banned me from the kitchen of the church where I used to attend, because of a little accident cutting apples at a church sleepover. Let’s just say, life with me is never boring.

The church where we attend was having a church picnic and someone suggested that I make deviled eggs. Since we have chickens and usually an abundance of eggs, I thought, “cool, I can do that, no problem.” Ha, I should have known better.

My wonderful hubby, helped me out by boiling the eggs and putting them in the fridge for me. That way I could make the deviled eggs at my convenience after I got home from work. (I really think he is afraid for me to use the stove.)

Well, after a day of crazy work and errands, I open the door and see the pesky boiled eggs staring at me when I open the refrigerator door. So I sigh, and set myself about the task of making deviled eggs. I get all my ingredients out, a mixing bowl, a big wooden spoon and then I spy a long forgotten gadget hiding in the drawer with the mixer, my cookie gun. Yes, I said, cookie gun.

I thought, “Oh! That will make fancy work of these eggs, I’ll be done in no time.” Ha, again.

I prep the eggs, mix all the ingredients and I’m ready to fill the cookie gun with the yummy egg filling. There are several different options for how I want the mix to fill the eggs. there is an attachment for making Christmas tree cookies, stars and all sorts of cookie shapes and then there are attachments for cake decorating, like rose petals and ribbons and such. So I thought, “Hmmm, egg filling is kind of thick so lets go with the one that has a wide star shaped opening.”

 Sounds easy enough, so I set it up, and load the egg filling into the gun. Here’s where it gets interesting…
The first few eggs looked beautiful, and then nothing so I keep pressing the trigger on the gun. Rapid fire, is never a good idea.

Before I knew it, so much pressure had built up in the cookie gun, that it exploded deviled egg filling across the kitchen counter top and it ricocheted all over me. I was covered in deviled eggs. I looked like I had been spackling a very colored ugly room.

Not all of the egg concoction fit into the gun, I still had enough to fill the eggs I had, so I thought, “all is not lost, I can still make this work.” So I wiped the egg off the counter and me. For some reason, I still thought the cookie gun was a good idea. All I can say, looking back, is duh. Anyway, I changed the decorating tip on the cookie gun to different tip, thinking the star pattern was the problem.

It wasn’t. The problem is that pickle relish gets stuck in the little prongs of the decorating tips and causes a huge back up in the gun. And it has serious repercussions to the one wielding the weapon. I don’t know if I will ever get all the egg out of my spiky hair. It is now brown, silver and yolk colored.

Ah, but alas, I am not one to give up. I must have a persistence gene that just won’t allow me to give up on things. I think it has plagued me all of my life, now that I think about it. At any rate, I still had egg goo left and I was determined I was going to get the gun to work or die trying.

I did get the gun to work. I took the decorator tip off all together and it worked like a charm, and I had just enough egg filling left to fill all the eggs. However, there was a drawback to this methodology, without the pretty decorator edges, my eggs looked like little yellow piles of dog poop. Yumm! How appetizing is that?!

So I’m home all alone, looking at these eggs, and laughing my butt off. I have truly lost it. I can’t serve dog poop eggs to the people at church, or can I? Hummmm. So I got a little spoon and smashed all the little piles down and swirled them around and covered them with paprika. Maybe, maybe not, I can’t decide, take them don’t take them? I’m the only one who knows they looked like dog poop for a short time in their lives. Andy may get to eat a lot of deviled eggs, and then he’s going to have to sleep in the barn.

The moral of the story is, use a spoon, unless you are authorized to use the gun.

Thanks for reading.