Cooking Lately

My freezer is full right now! It's not full of meals the way I'd like for it to be but there's definitely food and I hope I will find the change of pace refreshing & useful.
There's lots of cooked ground beef waiting for tacos, spaghetti, sloppy joes, etc., lots of chopped & sauteed onions and TONS of soup. Last week it was much cooler than this week and it just got me in the mood for soup. So I spent most of Monday's Mother's Day Out time shopping & cooking for my first ever Soup Day! And I got tons of each of 3 recipes of soup.
I think I've shared the recipes for Taco Soup and White Chicken Chili before and I doubled each of those. Then I made a tried & true old favorite of mine. It's a vegetable soup recipe I got from one of my college mentors in a recipe collection she gave me when I got married. It never disappoints. I've also made 2 other new recipes that I've been happy with so I'm including those below as well. So here goes!

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff - this one Shane said it smelled better than it tasted but it was almost worth it to have that yummy smell in the house all day. I liked it! Both of my kids ate it - one more willingly than the other!

Crock Pot Pesto Spinach Lasagna - this is from the queen of the crock pot and I thought it was quite yummy. It has red sauce too so it's not as "green" and "pesto-y" as I expected but lasagna in the crock pot is a new discovery that I like. The noodles go in uncooked & you sneak spinach (or zucchini as I substituted since I didn't have enough fresh spinach) in on your entire family - what's better than that!

Vegetable Soup
courtesy of Mary Ann Godwin
1lb ground beef, browned & drained
1 onion chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
6 carrots, chopped
2 (28 oz) cans crushed tomatoes (I used fresh this time & it was yummy!)
2 cans French green beans
1 can green peas
2 cans butter or great northern beans
2 cans yellow or white corn
2 beef bullion cubes
2 chicken bullion cubes
1 Tbs salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp Worcestershire
2 tsp soy sauce

Brown the meat and cook the chopped onions. Boil carrots & celery to soften them. Combine all ingredients in a huge pot. Bring to a boil; simmer one hour covered.
This recipe makes a ton. It almost overflows my biggest pot every time! It is easily halved or make the whole thing and it freezes well. Great on a winter evening!

The next two on my list are both from Susan Zellner, an old friend from Auburn. She is a pioneer in the freezer cooking realm and both of these were part of her last round. I'm not freezing them, just making them, but they sound delicious. Here's the links and I'll let you know how they turn out.
Pizza Casserole - what kid wouldn't at least try something called "Pizza Casserole" and with Bennett's obsession with pepperoni, I may have found a hit!
Italian Beef Sandwich - the tough part on this one is beer since we don't drink it. I'll either run buy some or maybe just knock on my neighbor's door & borrow some (Angie, are you reading this?!)