Christmas in July!

 

Christmas is five months from today, y'all! I realize we're all sweltering in this heat (except for our Aussie friends... *waving*), but on this blog, we embrace the weather we love and ignore the weather we don't.  So... 

I made soup.

I'm calling this Frankensoup because I mixed together a couple of recipes and added some stuff of my own, so it's kind of a mess, but it turned out well. It's a slow cooker recipe, so you don't have to bother with the stove, and it's super quick to throw together if you use frozen vegetable mixes, which I love to keep on hand. For normal people, we'll give it a nice name:

Creamy Chicken Vegetable Soup

1.5 lbs chicken, chopped (I used leftover grilled)

1 bag frozen soup mix vegetables (I use PictSweet Farms 28 oz bag)

1 c. frozen seasoning blend (onions, red & green peppers)

1/2 c. flour

Seasoning ***see note

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp EACH dried sage and rosemary

1/4 tsp dried thyme

a bay leaf or two

4 c. chicken broth

1 c. heavy cream

*****

Mix chicken, vegetables, flour, and seasonings (except bay leaf) in slow cooker. Pour in chicken broth and add bay leaf (I pop the bay leaf in last so it's easy to find and discard when done). Cover and cook on high about 3 hours. Remove bay leaf, add cream and stir well. Cook about 10 more minutes.

Because I was using leftover grilled chicken which was already seasoned with salt, pepper, and onion, I cut back on the other seasonings. If you're using raw chicken, you may want to adjust your seasonings and your cook time.

The soup mix blend I use has *everything* in it: peas, carrots, corn, green beans, tomatoes, potatoes, celery. I love it. Use whatever vegetable blend you prefer.

Back to my little finish.

This is Santa is Coming by Stitchy Princess. I stitched him as charted with the recommended DMC, except for the border, where I used Caron Wildflowers in Ash because I was too lazy to alternate white and grey stitches. This gorgeous blue fabric is Inky Blue linen from this Etsy shop. It doesn't look like she has any at the moment, but perhaps she'll have more soon. It's a beautiful deep blue, that's very well balanced and doesn't pull too purple or grey.

I'm up to my eyebrows in a massive sewing room clean out and reorganization. It's the kind of project where it looks worse the more work you do, and you have to keep at it until it starts getting better. I'm still in the "it looks like raccoons got loose in here" stage, but I'm beginning to see glimmers of hope. Of course, I'm getting lots of "help."

They are ever-present, always underfoot, and progress is frequently derailed by emergency snuggles. But we're managing. 

Hope you're all well and enjoying your summer. I am so ready for fall. But I pretty much live in a state of being ready for fall, so I guess that's to be expected. Maybe a new Christmas chart and a new soup recipe will help you ignore the heat!

Five months til Christmas!