Today the family had lunch at Sweet Tomatoes, a soup and salad bar restaurant. It’s usually pretty standard fare, but today they had something out of the ordinary — at least I’d never seen it before.
The restaurant boasts 8 freshly-made soups daily:
Not that I am going to hold them to the promise of 8 soups, but today they only had 7 soups and a bucket of stuffing. Yes, stuffing. On the soup bar. Diners were encouraged to add a scoop of stuffing to their Creamy Herbed Turkey Soup:
Comfort and joy?
Add a scoop of non-vegetarian stuffing to your turkey soup. Why? Why not?
For some reason — maybe the sheer “what the hell” of it — the stuffing in the soup just cracked us up. As I was snapping these photos and kind of making fun of the whole thing, however, the guy next to me was so excited to plop some stuffing in his soup that you could practically the hear the buttons on his shirt popping off.
Next Thanksgiving, when you’re looking for a way to use up leftover stuffing, remember — stuffing goes great in soup! 🙂
I found these cute little peppermint marshmallows at the grocery store last week:
I had a recipe for Peppermint Popcorn Bark that I had been wanting to try, and these seemed like they would be a fun addition. The end result was a pepperminty, pretty-in-pink holiday treat, that, like Jiffy Pop, was as much fun to make as it was to eat. (Well, sort of.)
A few tips —
1. For best results, don’t use microwave popcorn. Make 2 batches of popcorn — for each pop 1/2 cup of popcorn kernels in 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, following package directions.
2. I used 11 6″ candy canes. To crush them, put them in a large ziploc bag, place on a towel, and crush with a mallet or rolling pin.
3. Look for peppermint oil–not peppermint extract–in the baking aisle. Extract will cause the almond bark to seize up, and it will get clumpy and not look very nice. The peppermint oil won’t do that, and the melted almond bark will be smooth and creamy, easier to work with, and look prettier.
Place popcorn in a large mixing bowl. Place almond bark or white chocolate chips in a medium bowl and melt in microwave, heating in 30-second intervals and stirring until smooth. Stir in peppermint oil, and pour over popcorn. Add crushed candy canes and marshmallows, and stir until popcorn is evenly coated. Spread popcorn out on 2 large baking sheets.
Place chocolate chips in a small bowl and melt in microwave, heating in 30-second intervals and stirring until smooth. Using a spoon, drizzle melted chocolate over popcorn. Let sit until chocolate and almond bark have hardened (if possible, place in refrigerator for 10-15 minutes to speed this step up). When the chocolate and almond bark have hardened, break up popcorn into chunks.
