Ultimate Chicken Noodle Soup!

I love trying new recipes and being creative. Luckily so does Marc, he also loves to help me cook, so I feel like I can take on a little bit more challenging recipes. Last week we were watching Tyler's Ultimate on Food Network. He was making the Ultimate Rainy day lunch. He made amazing brownies, grilled cheese with mozzarella and pesto, and the Ultimate Chicken Noodle Soup. In place of the chicken he used chicken apple sausage, and in place of the noodles he used torteillini! We both love soups and got really excited to try it. When we made our dinner list it was the first thing on there. It has been raining for about a week and sounded so good, especially since it hasn't been higher than 60 degrees! We were so excited we couldn't wait until Thursday like we planned, so we made it Sunday! Delicious!! Mine did not look quite as pretty as this

We will definitely be making this again! It really is a time consuming meal. I put Marc on meatball duty and I took over the rest. If their weren't tow of us it would have taken about 3 hours to make. If you do the meatballs before of have someone help you, you can put them in in the right step. Marc said he bragged to everyone at school about how good it was! It is kind of expensive if you have to buy a lot for it. Most of it we usually have but happened to run out before we made it! I halved the recipe and there were still too many noodles. Anyway, here is the recipe. Let me know if you try it and what you think!

Ingredients
For the soup:
Extra-virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic, smashed
2 large carrots, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, sliced
1 bay leaf
4 fresh thyme sprigs
3 quarts low-sodium chicken broth
5 parsley stems, plus 1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
4 black peppercorns
Kosher salt
Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, for garnish
For the meatballs:
1 medium onion, diced
Olive oil
6 links organic chicken-apple sausage meat
1 egg
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 handful fresh parsley leaves
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
2 pounds frozen cheese tortellini, store bought
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Directions
For the soup:
Set a large stock pot over medium heat. Add olive oil, half the garlic, carrot, onion, celery, bay leaf, and thyme and gently saute until fragrant, about 5 to 7 minutes. Pour in chicken broth, add parsley stems, black peppercorns and salt, to taste. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer while you work on meatballs and tortellini.
For the meatballs:
Caramelize the diced onion in a saute pan with a little olive oil over medium heat. Add the sausage, egg, onion, thyme, parsley, and cheese to the bowl of a food processor and pulse until they all come together. Season with salt and pepper. Heat a skillet with a few tablespoons of olive oil until just smoking. Use a small ice cream scoop to drop meatballs onto skillet. Cook, turning, until golden brown.
Drop tortellini straight from freezer into soup. Cook until they float. Once meatballs are browned, add to pot of chicken broth. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2 or 3 minutes. Give soup a final seasoning and serve in shallow bowls with a small shower of Parmesan, olive oil, and parsley.

We didn't add the extra olive oil, and used dried thyme, but next time, we are going to do it all! Have fun and enjoy!

Oh, and Today is Marc's birthday, despite the fact that he wishes it were not! Look for pictures and updates for that!

Tomatoes!

The other day Marc was checking his school e-mail account and found out that the Ag department was selling tomato plants for $2 each! We have wanted to have a little garden, but were waiting until we move. We decided we couldn't pass this up. They were selling two types of tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes, I thought we would just get 2 or 3 plants, well here is what happens when you let you hubby go and get them...


You get 6! We now have 4 cherry tomato plants, and 2 beefsteak plants. Most of the plants are already blossoming which means that we will have our own homegrown tomatoes in a few weeks! I can't wait! We are hoping that the plants make a safe travel to AZ in July, it would be fun to have that little bit of Rexburg and BYU-I with us there!

In Marc's defense, I stayed in the car when he bought the plants, he didn't go all alone, but he did decide that 6 was better than 4! We can't wait to use our tomatoes and make salsa! Yum!

Yellowstone Trip #1

Marc didn't have school Monday or Tuesday, Today, so we took advantage of the nice weather and long weekend and went to Yellowstone! I only went once and was there for a few hours and Marc has never been! Since it is only about an hour and a half away we could resist, especially since we will not be living so close for much longer! We started out our trip here:

This is us in line at McDonalds. We had buy one get one free breakfast sandwich coupons. I decided to take a picture because there was a long line, but we were only there about 5 minutes before we had our food!

We were pretty worried that there were going to be a lot of people since it was a long weekend. I looked online for hotels and there was not a single room Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights, I thought perfect everyone will be leaving! It was true! We passed so many cars on the way up! A lot of RV's and cars from other states! I was so happy! I tried to take pictures, it was seriously a caravan of happiness! The pictures didn't turn out so great, but I did take a few on the drive up...





It is a really pretty drive! The weather was so nice, we drove with the windows down for a little bit! Marc says that the closer we got the more excited I got. But really it was because he had never been and I was excited for him! Here is when we entered the town of West Yellowstone. Even the town is fun to walk around in. There are lots of little shops and buildings.


This was the line into the park, something else I was worried about! I was afraid that we would get to the gates and there would be too many people that Marc didn't want to go in. But as you can see, at 11:00 am, that was not the case!


We bought a season pass for $50, it normally costs $25 for 7 days, but the season pass allows you to go for a whole year! We plan to get our moneys worth and more this summer! Here are a few pictures as we got into the park...




You can see in some of those pictures the burnt trees. The fires in 1988 burnt a large portion of the park, but after 21 years it is still a little noticeable. We decided we wanted to see Old Faithful, so we made our way on that stretch of road to it. There are quite a few places to stop and see the geysers and paint pots along the way. As soon as we got close and could see the smoke I heard a huge gasp! Marc was really excited! I tried to get his reaction a second time on the video camera, but it wasn't the same. We stopped and took a few pictures. It was about 60 degrees and windy, which helped the sulfur smell blow away from us!




We even got a picture together!

We made our way a little further and found some more geysers by this really pretty river! We had fun walking around here, the geysers here were really loud and most of them were bubbling really loud!





Marc took this shot of one of the geysers and was pretty proud of it so I posted it just for him!


After we left this spot we saw a bunch of cars pulled off in a spot, that only means one thing...wildlife! There was a herd of Bison! Marc was really excited, so we stopped with all the other cars and took some pictures! The little babies were so cute and curious! They were about 15 feet away from us. After we got in the car we both said, "that was stupid"! There are signs all over that say not to get too close, but we saw them after we got close.





We then got to Old Faithful! We weren't sure when it was supposed to go off again, so we sat down and waited. We were there about 20 minutes before it went off, we heard some pretty funny things! This lady sat down behind us and said out loud to everyone, "Is everyone just sitting here waiting for this thing to go off?" I wanted to turn around and use Jeff Foxworthy's famous "here's yer sign"! Are you kidding me lady! There are benches all around these smoking holes in the ground, what else are we doing! She then kept saying that Americans were strange and there was nothing like that in Iran where she was from! I am pretty sure she wasn't from Iran, I just know. Marc made me laugh pretty hard though! I think he was tired of waiting because out of nowhere he said "And Today is the day Old Faithful dies..."! We had heard recently that due to strong seismic activity some of the geysers were not as active, I think Marc thought that it would never go off and we would be able to tell our kids we were in the thousands of people that waited for Old Faithful when it lost faith! I couldn't help but laugh the whole time! Here are a few pics from that, oh, and Old Faithful still is faithful! As we were leaving we saw a family from India, the little boy with a VERY thick accent said "We waited here for so long just for that". The accent makes it so much funnier, try thinking it in your head! Really I laughed for about 5 minutes after that!




We also went and walked around the Old Faithful lodge! It is so cool! If you ever go, it is definitely worth it! It is a 7 story log cabin, restaurant, hotel, gift shop etc. There are two there to walk around, but this one is really worth it! I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out. Just go look for yourself! We kept driving and looking for a spot to eat our picnic lunch, we got near Yellowstone lake and had to stop! How beautiful is this?




We couldn't find a nice grassy spot to lay out blanket out and eat, so we used the car. We made sandwiches and had carrots, cucumbers, and cherries! It was so delicious. We laid down in the back and looked around for a little bit after! We were so full!


Then we walked around the lake and the geysers there! It was really pretty! Marc tried to take a few pictures to see how deep some of these pools are, we couldn't really guess, they are so deep, so blue, and so stinky!




We saw an elk and I tried to take a picture of Marc with the elk, it didn't really turn out, but you can see the elk in the back over his shoulder!


As we were leaving the park we found some really pretty waterfalls. You stand really high above them but they were so beautiful!





Here are a few cool shots at another set of geysers, these ones were really smoky, As you walk by you feel like you are walking in a fog bath! Every pore opens, Marc liked staying there for awhile, he said it made my hair really curly! There are also a few Marc took as we were leaving, I think he was sick of driving, so I took over, then he went camera happy!




As I was typing this novel... Marc came in and I told him I wouldn't post a picture, I thought it would be embarrassing, he told me to! So I am sorry, but here it is:

Don't worry, he is just posing! He isn't doing anything that could get us kicked out!

Sorry this is super long! We had a really fun day and only saw about a 1/4 of the park. We plan to go back a few more times! If you want to go, we'll take you!