MEATLESS MONDAY

Each week on Friday I plan out the next week's menu and make a grocery list. Since we live in a rural setting, numerous stops at the grocery are not feasible so we purchase our groceries on the weekend according to the next week's menu. The only problem with this is that from time to time, I just don't feel like cooking what I had planned! Today was one such day. Since it was meatless monday I had planned a meatless meal and was going to fix red lentil coconut curry over rice. It's a favorite dish or ours, so it wasn't that I didn't like the dish, it's just that I didn't feel like cooking it! It takes a lot of prep work and it just didn't sound good to me, so I had to come up with another option.

On our menu I also had creamy onion chowder with cheesy popovers. It was a new recipe I had been wanting to try, but it didn't really fall into the 'meatless' category because of the addition of bacon in the dish. Sometimes I have to make concessions! haha I'm glad I chose to make this recipe tonight because a hot soup was perfect for such a cold day! It was so cold today that our pipes froze. I turned on the kitchen faucet this morning and nothing came out! Cole was able to thaw them out quickly and the rest of the day I ran water in them from time to time.

Hot soup on a cold day falls into the category of 'comfort food' in my opinion! I adapted the recipe to suit my taste. It called for chicken broth and milk as part of the soup, as it was more of a chowder than a broth type soup. By using more broth and less milk it cut down the fat in the soup, as well as cutting the amount of bacon suggested in half. Instead of using a whole pound of bacon I used 6 strips and it was plenty to give the soup a nice smoky flavor without all the additional fat from all that bacon! Plus, the recipe calls for cooking the onions in the bacon drippings. Can you imagine grease from a whole pound of bacon in a pot of soup!? TOO MUCH! So, here is the recipe. Make it like it is, or do what I did and make it to your liking. As for the popovers...we loved them. They are light and eggy with a nice cheddar cheese kick and the perfect accompaniment to this soup! I'm going to use the popover recipe as a side dish for other soups. They are nice to dip into the soup and soak up some juices, and very easy to make!

ONION CHOWDER WITH CHEESY ONION POPOVERS

1 pound bacon, chopped (I used 6 slices)

4 large white onions, chopped (I made large pieces)

Salt

1 1/4  cups flour

One 32 ounce container chicken broth (I used 2 conatiners of BEEF broth)

2 cups milk (I only needed 1)

3 large eggs

2 Tbsp. melted butter

2 ounces cheddar cheese, cut into 12 - 1/2 inch cubes

1. Preheat the over to 425, Grease a 12-cup muffin pan. In a large Dutch over, cook the bcon over med. heat until crisp. Transfer to paper towel. Add the onions to the pot, season with salt and cook for 8-10 minutes.  Set aside 1/4 c. cooked onions. Sprinkle the remaining onions with 1/4 c. flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.  Stir in the chicken broth (stirred in 1 container of beef) and bring to a boil; lower heat and simmer for 8 minutes. Then add in additional broth or milk.

Popovers: in blender or food processor, mix the reserved onion, 1 c. milk, the remaining 1 c. flour, the eggs, butter and 1/4 tsp. salt until smooth.  Fill each muffin cup halfway with batter and place a cube of cheese in the center of each. Bake for 25 min., then lower to 350 degrees and bake for 15 min. more.

Two notes: the recipe calls for using the bacon as a garnish in each bowl..I just added it back in when I added the second container of broth. The other difference is that after I cooked the popovers for the first 25 minutes they were done! So, use your judgment for the cooking time. When they are golden brown they're done. ENJOY!