Chicken Tortilla Soup

Winter in Michigan.  If you don't live here, don't let the media romanticize it.  Yeah, fall is really pretty, and when spring finally gets here, it makes me happy to be alive, but ugh, winter.  And we're only almost to February, which is basically like winter's punch in the face.

I mean look at this - Lake Michigan is just there freezing up some giant ice balls.  Why!?  Don't answer that, I don't really want to know.  I'm trying to stay positive, I made snow ice cream and tried to embrace the season, but it seems like it hasn't stopped snowing in a month.  A couple of guys that work for the city spent an entire day loading snow in to a dump truck and driving it away - and that was just the parking lot at my office!  I wonder how many man hours we have in to snow removal in this town, and where they're putting all the snow for that matter.

I'm trying to make the best of things.  I bought a really cute hat, the hubs got me a pair of those gloves that work on touch screen and if nothing else, it's a good excuse to drink hot chocolate. But I still had to go to work the day we got 19 inches of snow and we're knee deep in ANOTHER polar vortex, which is some kind of fancy weatherman talk for don't breathe too deep when you're outside or your lungs will quit working.  What's a girl to do?  Stay inside.  And make soup.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Barbecue Salmon with Pineapple Salsa

Believe it or not, I wasn't always this much of a foodie. 

I would actually have considered myself to be quite a picky eater.

 

I think it comes from the years I spent making my own dinners as a kid. 

My mom is a single parent, and she ended up working a second shift job. 

Once I was old enough to stay home alone, well, that's what I did. 

I wasn't allowed to use our gas stove unsupervised, so I improvised. 

Campbell's Condensed Chicken Noodle is just as good out of the microwave, and my older and wiser cousin taught me how to make a passable grilled cheese using the toaster and microwave. 

 

I was never very adventurous.  I knew what I liked, and come hell or high water, that's what I wanted.

 

I'm also an only child.

 

Years later, I would work at one of the fine dining-est restaurants that has yet come to this little town.  Suddenly, a whole culinary world was opened up to me.  The better I knew the menu, and the ingredients, the better tips I would make, and I got an employee discount. 

Eating there was a win/win/win. 

One of my favorite dishes was barbecue salmon and, because the place has since closed,

here is my attempt to recreate it.