An Evening at Home

The wind was really blowing this afternoon.  I was taking a cardboard box to the garbage and it was almost blowing out of my hands!  Needless to say, no bike ride this afternoon!  I thought about maybe going to the gym and doing weights, but ultimately I decided on a quiet night in at home.  My fur ball Finlay will be off to stay with my parents shortly so I really just wanted to hang out with him.  (For those of you wondering, November and December are crazy busy times at work with lots of overtime, so Finlay goes to stay with his grandparents.  To top it off I have a big project starting in January, so busy times ahead as I close out the year!)

So anyhow, I decided to try making a delicious looking mushroom soup that I found here yesterday.  Check out the link for the main recipe, but I did make a few changes.  First off I sliced up some double smoked bacon and rendered it in a soup pot. 

I removed the bacon once it was crispy and the sweated leeks and onions in the bacon fat.  I deglazed the pan with some white wine instead of sherry since I accidently purchased sweet sherry instead of dry.  It wasn’t labelled either way, but it sure tastes sweet…oops!  I removed those from my pot and started cooking up my mushrooms – oysters, shitakes and button.

After adding the leeks and onions back in with the mushrooms I added the broth in the pot, some thyme and let it simmer away for 20 minutes.  While it simmered I figured I’d better taste test my wine…

Luckily the wine passed the test!  Once the soup was done simmering I blended the soup and added in just a touch of cream.  I topped it with a teeny bit of bacon and served it with a spinach salad, plus a piece of fresh ciabatta with a little goat brie on top.  Yum!

Maybe not the healthiest dinner ever, but it sure was tasty!  Hope everyone else has had a great evening!!