by Mama Mabel
Our church is having a big New Year's Eve shindig tonight. Every year they bring in a band and have door prizes and more food than people can eat. Last year they had around 80 people show up. That's huge for a church that has around 20-30 people at a regular service.
This will be our first year to go so Sunday after the service, I gathered with the ladies to find out what I needed to bring. The church is providing hot dogs and corn chips and the ladies will potluck the rest. At first, the plan was to bring a crockpot of something as well as some sandwiches. I asked if the church would be providing chili for the corndogs or if we were making it. It turns out that some women would make chili and some soup. Then one industrious soul said she was planning to bring a crock pot of chili as well as one of soup. What a great idea! Then we'd be sure to have enough. In fact, it was decided that since there will only be around 10 women bringing the food, all of us should do that. So now I was on the hook for a soup, a chili, and sandwiches. To top it off, there has to be dessert so each woman will bring one of those as well.
This is all well and good, even exciting for the attendees because the ladies in my church can COOK! Pretty much everything they make is scrumptious. Unfortunately, as much as I love to cook, I don't have many crock pot soup recipes and didn't have time to test new ones. I had from Sunday afternoon until tonight to plan and execute 4 church worthy dishes. Not that anyone would get upset or be rude if I didn't bring as much as everyone else, but I would like to prove myself to be one of them. This week, that means kitchen magic. Good thing I thrive on cooking challenges.
I have a white chicken chili recipe that has been a hit in the past. It's kind of cheating because they meant chilis that can be used for hotdogs and Frito pie but I think there will be plenty of those so something a little different will be a welcome change. My sweet MIL Honey gave me a chocolate chip cookie mix as well as peanut butter and jelly as part of a larger Christmas gift (sounds strange but it was a great present!) so I'm set for dessert and sandwiches. The kicker was the soup. There will already be at least 2 veggie soups (the only kind of soup I have successfully made in a slow cooker) and a potato soup that I know of. What's left to make?
Coondog and I decided that someone needs to bring black eyed peas because it's New Year's Eve and that's a traditional food. I didn't want to just bring a big batch of BEPs though. How lame is that? After some brainstorming and calls to both Granny Girl and Honey, Hoppin' John soup was invented. Since I spent last night after work making dinner, deboning the chicken thighs for the white chili, and making cookies while convincing Ladybug that she should pick her dad's nose instead of mine and she didn't need to eat a plate of cookies, I didn't get the soup made before bed. This morning, I frantically diced 1/2 each of a red, yellow and green bell pepper, threw in a pound of dried BEPs, some dried minced onion (no time to chop the real thing), some leftover ham, and salt and pepper in a crock. I added a box of vegetable broth and stirred it all together then threw in a 1/4 package of bacon from my freezer for extra flavor and added more water to finish it off. Thanks to my Green Acres style kitchen setup, I had to plug the crock pot base in by my dining room table. I flipped a chair to have the front of it face the wall and the back fill the space between the wall and my round table so it won't be easy for it to get accidentally bumped. Ladybug assured me that she knew it was hot and wouldn't touch it but she's 2 so I don't trust her 100% to not get curious. So now I have white chili and Hoppin' John soup slow cooking their way to what it hopefully potluck worthy deliciousness. Thankfully Coondog is home to keep an eye on water levels. I'll let you know how it turns out.
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