Arrrgh!!!

We've reached the winter doldrums in the kitchen a little early this year. Elegante Mother, Dear Husband, Second Son and I eat a fairly wide range of foods but it seems that we get to the middle of the winter and we eat the same dozen things or so again and again. To make matters worse, no one wants to help me plan the meals they will be eating. Personally, if it weren't so darned expensive and so bad for a diet, I'd just as soon go out to eat.

I decided that I would try a new recipe this week, and opted for Tortilla Soup. I pulled six or so recipes from the Internet and read through them. When we were in Hawaii two years ago, we had an incredible soup at the Hula Grill that was basically a tortilla soup with chunks of fish. I picked the recipe that I thought came closest to that soup.

I pulsed cilantro, onion, garlic, a can of diced tomatoes, and a jalapeño pepper in the blender. I added that to chicken stock, salt and cumin, and let the soup stock simmer for an hour. This recipe calls for chicken rather than fish. I decided to bake the chicken breasts with a very light breadcrumb coating, so that left over chicken could be used for another meal. I diced three of the chicken breasts, shredded Monterey Jack cheese, quartered an avocado, and set out sour cream and salsa. At the end of the cooking time I thickend the stock with cornstarch, and then fried strips of corn tortillas for a topping.

Each of us assembled the soup to suit ourselves. EM was the only one to have avocado. I passed on the avocado and the salsa. Dear Husband had everything but the avocado. We each had the soup that we wanted, and it seemed to be fine, no matter how you assembled it.

I may use one more jalapeño pepper next time. This was mild, but very tasty, and it was a pleasure to try something new. I think the next new meal will be shrimp, with linguine, broccoli and carrots, and the next will be a Creole style meal with crawfish and andouille.

Any suggestions? Variety is the spice of life!