Wagon Wheel Soup

This soup is inspired by a Pioneer Woman recipe, her Italian Chicken Soup, but I've made so many changes to it, I think I can officially call it my own.  

Soup in the middle of the summer is a little weird, but it is one of my hubby's favorite meals and I just felt like having it. 

Now start off by cleaning up from last night's dinner.  C'mon I know I'm not the only one that leaves the dishes til the morning. 

I use two pots when making this soup, a 5qt and a 7qt - make sure you are adequately prepared. 

Put two split chicken breasts in the 5qt pot and cover with 64 oz of chicken stock.

Bring this to a boil, then turn down the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. While you are waiting for the chicken to cook, watch last nights episode of Real Housewives ;) After 30min has gone by, turn off the heat and let it sit another 30 min. 

Now enough monkey business, heat a small skillet over medium heat.  Once it is hot, add in oil and oregano.  Turn off the heat and stir for one minute.  I've made this a bunch of times, but today I burned the oregano :(  I guess I let my pan preheat too long.  No biggie, I dumped it out and did it again, without turning on the stove.  The residual heat from the pan will do the trick to get it right. 

Start chopping your veggies - onion, peppers, and celery.  

Put some olive oil in your 7qt pot and heat it over medium.  Saute those veggies for 10 min. 

Take the chicken out of the pot and let it cool a bit before you shred it.  Discard the skin and bones.  I used tongs and a fork to seperate the meat from the bones, then shredded it by hand.  I also turned the heat on the veggies down low, while I finished shredding the meat so they wouldn't burn.

Now turn the heat on the veggies back up to high, add in your bag of frozen corn, and carefully add in the chicken and the chicken stock.  Boil, then reduce the heat and simmer.

Fill that 5qt pot up with water to boil for the pasta.

You can use any shape of small pasta you want, but the soup gets its name from this pasta shape, so get it if you can (my normal grocery store stopped carrying it, but the other one in my area has it)

 
When the pasta is al dente (even a little less), drain it and add it to the soup pot.  Add in the cream and oregano mixture.  Stir it up, turn off the heat, and let it sit for a bit to all come together.  The pasta will soak up a lot of the broth and get softer. Season to taste.

I like to add a lot of Parmesan cheese to mine but my husband doesn't like any - to each his own.  But whatever you do, get some nice fresh bread to sop up the broth.

download recipe here

xx Heather

What's In A Name?

I've been doing some thinking and since I've kind of revamped my blog and the direction I want to take it, I feel like it needs a new name - and then it hit me as I was driving home from the gym today:  Heather... from Scratch.  (OK, my hubby helped me tweak it a bit)

It feels fitting in so many ways.

My husband and I have built our lives together from pretty much nothing.  We got married at 19, I was in college and he was a private in the army.  We had no money and no furniture and together we started working to build our lives.  I feel that almost everything we have accomplished in our lives we have done ourselves.  Our families are very supportive, but since they are in NY and we are in VA, we do a lot on our own.

We've had what feels like more than our fair share of pitfalls, but we have always picked ourselves back up and started over again.  Usually from scratch.

Then there is the fun, lighthearted stuff:  We are building our first home and I love to bake from scratch.  


... from Scratch just seems to sum up who I am and what my life is like.


So, if you are following me, please switch over to my new URL:

heatherfromscratch.blogspot.com

I hope you join me as I enter this new chapter of my life,

 xx Heather

The Beginning of My Target Wishlist

I'm so happy that the heat wave is over!!!  Were you effected?  This weekend was just brutal.  Our current apartment leaks air so badly and the A/C can't cope when the temperature starts to get over 90 degrees.  Our new home builders have won several awards for energy efficiency and they are building the tightest homes on the market :)  Next summer should be much more comfortable.

I came across two great finds while doing my weekly shopping at Target today.  I didn't buy either (my husband thinks it is a little nuts to be buying things when we haven't even broke ground yet), but I will be pinning them.

The first is this super cute mirror:

I couldn't find the price in store or online :(  I don't have a spot in mind, but if I find one I'll most likely pick it up.

My second find is this shower caddy for about $25:

It is so perfect for our master bathroom!  It is ORB just like all of our other hardware. The shower has a bench seat in it, so I'll eventually buy two of these (one for each of us) and set them in the corners of the bench.  They will be the perfect height and provide plenty of storage for all our stuff.

It is going to be interesting sharing a bathroom again.  Our first apt in Georgia only had one bathroom and we lived there for three years.  Our current apartment has two bathrooms, so for the past six years we've each had our own.  Now that we will have a larger master bathroom with two sinks we are going to give this sharing thing a shot.

Do you share a bathroom with your significant other?

Have you done it both ways? Which worked out better?

xx Heather

The Floors

Finally, we get to the floors.  This is the last of the finishes we selected for our new house.  Now that we have made all our decisions, the next step is to start construction!  We have about a month before that happens and I can't wait!

I've always loved dark hardwood floors so this choice was a no-brainer.  We just had to compare our cabinet choice to pick the perfect shade, spice tint:

I wanted the floors to complement but not be matchy-matchy.  The floors have less red in them than the cabinets, which is perfect.  I love the look of the distressed floors and I think it will give some  character to this brand new house.  Plus, I don't have to worry so much about dinging them.

There were only 6 stain colors to choose from for the banister and I could not believe how perfectly the kona shade matched our floors.  It's a perfect match!

The entire first floor will have the engineered hardwood and the carpet begins on the staircase.  I think the two materials look very nice together:

 

It was important that the carpet be a nice neutral that will work with however we decorate each of the three bedrooms.  It also needed to feel really nice and it does!  The color is called flax seed,  it has nice dimension, sort of like subtle highlights, and somewhat of a sheen, too :)

The laundry room will be getting vinyl.  I'm not a fan of vinyl, but it's just the laundry room and I was able to choose a very inoffensive style:

 

It has the same tones and pearliness as the carpet, so it is gonna look great!

Here you can see all of our choices together:

 

It was important to me that all of the tile, cabinets, granites and floors be very neutral and luxe looking.  I wanted an awesome base to decorate around for myself and to create a very appealing home for resale. 

Leave me some comments - I'd love to hear what you think!

xx Heather