Bread & Soup

Perfect meal for a chilly day! I made a vegetable and tortellini soup and a no knead bread. Both recipes were given to me by my father-in-law. He had made us the soup while we were visiting last month and he just passed the bread recipe on to me the other day.

The bread: No Knead Bread

The bread was really simple to make. Steamy Kitchen says that it's so easy a 4 y/o can do it. I'm not so sure about that statement, my 6 y/o and I seemed to have a few issues, but it was our first time making a yeast bread from scratch and we didn't ruin it, just could have done some things better. GQ helped me flour the counter and towel that the dough rests in and you can see we had a touch too much flour, but over all it was good. I thought it could use a bit less salt, next time I'll probably cut that amount in half. Warning: the crust is really crunchy, so if you don't enjoy a crusty, crunchy outer to your bread, don't make this or just pull off the crust like my husband did.

The soup: Vegetable Soup with Cheese Tortellini

I should have taken a picture in the bowl, much prettier, but in getting everybody's food ready, I forgot. So simple to put together, it's a great vegetarian soup that has a heartiness to it; fills you up! I'm sure you could also make this with some chicken stock and toss in some shredded chicken, too. Bonus is I got my husband to eat some vegetables! He said the flavor of the broth was so good that he was able to tolerate the zucchini, squash, carrots and celery. Baby steps...one day he'll eat these and love them and five years ago, he never would have even tried a spoonful of this soup and I got him to eat a bowl of it. Woo hoo!