Chicken Tortilla Soup

We've finally had some cooler weather in Dallas! Coincidentally, I planned to make chicken tortilla soup from P-dub for a dinner with some girls I used to work with. Catching up was good but my pup was not good! She was so overly excited for new people and jumped all over everyone. Hopefully the soup made up for it.

Note: My soup wasn't nearly as dark or brothy looking as hers below... flavor was still good!

(photo from P-dub)

3rd Dish of Christmas 2010 - Minestrone

First - Today is the hubs birthday! Happy Birthday Mike!

I found yet another recipe on the kitchn's website - minestrone soup. This soup is an easy one-pot dish that has a lot of ingredients that you probably have on hand. I made this because we haven't had a lot of time for good, healthy meals between Mike's long retail hours and my hours at work lately. I am going to bring a couple of extra servings to keep in the fridge at work so I don't have to order out every time we stay late over the next week or so! If we're having it at home... I'll probably make a grilled cheese to go with a warm bowl of the soup!

Quick side note - the recipe says that you can leave out the bacon to start and use olive oil instead... if I said the hubs is a bacon fan, it would be quite the understatement, so I of course started with the bacon! I, however, did only use 2 slices of bacon instead of the 3 the recipe called for to decrease the amount of grease. What was left in the pot cooked out really quickly as the vegetables were softening and there is no greasy reside to the end product!