Sunday, October 16, 2011

2011.10.16 - cream of crab soup


6 months since the last blog post...


So I have this new love for cream of crab soup. Last week after bible study we went to the Phoenix Emporium in Old Ellicott City. Jess got the soup sampler which was a cup of both of their soups, cream of crab and crab vegetable. A cup of one of their soups was like $4.95 and the soup sampler which was both cups for $5.95. Can't beat that. I ended up eating pretty much all of her cream of crab and have been thinking about it non stop.

We also split a bacon cheeseburger which was pretty epic because they get their beef from right down the street at J.W Treuth & Sons so you know the beef is FRESH and coming from 1 cow instead of 100. I ordered the burger medium and it actually came out medium.

Jess and I are going to be doing "No restaurant November" which I thought we made up but after a google search someone beat us to the punch. We're desperately trying to KILL OUR DEBT and enter 2012 debt free. So making the soup at home was a step in the right direction. EXCEPT this soup was freaking EXPENSIVE to make... all of the groceries to make it was a little over $40. The only thing we have left over is a cup of heavy whipping cream and a big thing of old bay :) The expensive part was obviously a pound of backfin crab for $17.99

I got the recipe from http://www.allrecipies.com

Here's a link to the actual recipe. Karyn's Cream of Crab Soup

Here are the ingredients and directions.


  • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 (1.25 ounce) envelope hollandaise sauce mix
  • 4 cups half-and-half, divided
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 3 tablespoons Old Bay Seasoning TM
  • 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
  • 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
  • 1 cup whipping cream
  • 1 tablespoon cooking sherry
  • 1 pound fresh crabmeat

  1. In a medium bowl, blend flour and hollandaise sauce mix with 2 cups half-and-half.
  2. Melt butter in a medium, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Slowly add hollandaise mixture, stirring constantly until thickened. Add remaining half-and-half, Old Bay, dry mustard, celery seed, and whipping cream. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat to low. Add crabmeat and sherry, stirring gently until warmed through. Serve immediately.


A lot of the reviews said that 3 tablespoons of old bay was to much, so I did a little under 2... 3 would have been fine. I put old bay on top when I served it. I also used a 1/4 teaspoon of celery salt instead of celery seed and didn't use any cooking sherry.

The soup was great, not as thick as the Phoenix, but served fresh it was actually HOT and not luke warm, and it had a lot more crab per bite for sure. I just heated some up in the microwave for lunch and it was good too.

Would I make it again? Sure, for a special occasion, but $40 for 6 servings of soup is way to expensive to be making any time soon.

I've never really liked soups but have been really enjoying them lately. Next I'd like to make french onion.

What is your favorite soup? Leave your answer in the comments!
jim baker


Saturday, April 2, 2011

2011.04.02 - A NEW BLOG POST?!!!! Making deviled eggs with my neice

Hey everyone...

I haven't blogged in 6 months and it's been a nice time unplugging. I sent out an update for the month telling what was up with us. If you want an e-mail update, leave a comment with your e-mail address and I'll get you one.

Today is my nieces birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINDSEY! Thursday night I drove up to their house in PA because I had to drive my sister to knee surgery the next day. Jeannie (my sister) is doing fine.

Anyway, this past Thanksgiving I was thinking of all the delicious foods I love and thinking how we should have all of these things at Thanksgiving. One of them was deviled eggs, and Lindsey piped in saying she liked them too. So I told her that from now on for every family holiday she was in charge of making deviled eggs. And at Christmas time when we visited, guess what she made. Deviled eggs!

I got the idea since Lindsey likes to cook that we should make up a bunch of eggs and try out some different types of deviled eggs. She liked the idea so here's the result.

Every good evening should start out with some little caesars pizza, this one didn't have the deep dish pizza though.... I haven't had little caesars since I lived in NY. Remember when I almost burned my house down with their dipping sauce?

Lindsey made some cupcakes for her birthday to take to school. I got to eat one before the pizza. They were AWESOME. Cupcakes are all the rage. For Jess' birthday her friend Colleen make some amazing cupcakes too. Check out Colleen's recent NYC cupcake adventure here.

Funfetti cupcakes, white frosting topped with a chocolate covered strawberry. DELICIOUS!

My sister Jeannie did all the hard work of boiling and peeling the eggs. Thanks Jeannie :)

Ingredients: hardboiled eggs

red onion

bacon?!

Here are some of the other staples. White vinegar, relish (which we didn't end up using) mayo, and miracle whip.

Lindsey starts the process, cutting the egg in half long ways.

Recently a photography teacher that taught in my photo school responded to our e-mail update and reminded me to make sure that I am not always behind the camera during family events. So I handed my camera over to my sister and let her snap a few.

Jeannie did pretty good behind the camera, she took this one of Lindsey.

Lindsey gets a little help from her mom.

Lindsey got super fancy and piped in her yolk mixture in with a bag. Not only was it a ton faster than me trying to hold onto a slippery egg white and neatly scoop the yolk into the egg, it looked a lot better.

Look how good those look! Presentation, presentation, presentation.

Lindsey and "Uncle Jimmy"

Lindsey's usual recipe for deviled eggs is her dad's recipe. This is how he makes them.

Lindsey's next recipe was only a bit different. This one added in some white vinegar, and didn't have celery salt.

This was based around a recipe I found on allrecipes.com You can see the actual recipe here. I didn't follow it, I just threw in some of the ingredients that it listed.

And this was my second recipe. I based this one off of how I grew up eating them. We always used miracle whip in our egg salad, potato salad, macaroni salad, and deviled eggs.

Jeannie, Lindsey and me!

Mike (Lindsey's dad, and Jeannie's husband, my brother in law) came home after work and taste tested them all without looking at the ingredients and could tell what was in each one. He liked the white vinegar and egg salad ones the best. Jeannie, Lindsey and I liked the bacon one the best. Cause bacon makes everything better :)

Since I was spending the night to get up and take my sister to the dr the next morning I had to sleep in Lindsey's room. I didn't wake up with Bieber fever, just a stomach ache from all of the pizza and eggs :)

Thanks to everyone who still checks in here from time to time, I was pretty surprised to look at the analytics to see that people are still checking in.

What's your go to deviled egg recipe? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Should I get back into blogging? If you think so leave me some comment love and maybe I will...

JIM baker