Last week we celebrated my husband’s birthday and his birthday dinner request happened to be my Rotini With Turkey Meatballs. Since I was making meatballs already for our dinner, I decided to make a double batch and make a little California Italian Wedding Soup for our soup this week.

Each family member has their own favorite soup. My daughter loves my chicken & noodle soup and now begs for it every time she has a tiniest bit of ache or pain. She claims that this soup is the only thing that could make her feel better. My son flips for my Pesto Chicken Tortellini Soup and asks for this weekly. My Greek Lemon Chicken Soup is my new favorite thing… in fact, I can almost taste it! My husband though firmly states that this California Italian Wedding Soup is the most comforting and satisfying soup on our family’s soup agenda.  Satisfyingly hardy with meatballs blended with ground turkey & beef , but also surprisingly light with fresh basil, spinach, and hints of lemon in every bite… it truly is a delicious soup treat for the whole family.

You won’t believe how easy it is to make this soup and with a double batch of baked meatballs in the fridge, you will have a great soup to feed a small army with a minimal amount of effort!

Grab four carrots out of your crisper drawer and chop them in small even pieces for your soup. This is a great time to get rid of any carrots that have lost some of their crispness since we will be cooking them up!

In a pot of salted & boiling water, add one cup of any small pasta that might be lurking in your pantry. I love to use small shells or orzo for this dish since those are two pastas we always have on hand. Cook as directed on the package.

In another pot, add a couple of tablespoons to the bottom of the pot and then add carrots, salt, and pepper. Let them cook for five minutes. Add two cloves of minced garlic to the pot and let the garlic cook for one minute. Be careful and don’t have your heat up too high for this or the garlic will burn.

You can now add the broth to your carrots and garlic. Add two boxes (eight cups) of low-sodium chicken broth. Next, you will add your secret weapon…one can of beef broth.  This is going to add to the meaty taste of your soup since you are baking your meatballs instead of cooking them in the soup. Finally, add the zest of one lemon to the broth. Save this lemon since we will be adding the juice to the broth later!

Pull your meatballs out of your fridge and add them to your soup broth along with your drained & cooked pasta. If you don’t have any meatballs on hand, you can use our recipe below for an easy (and lower fat) way of cooking meatballs for your dishes. Now that I bake my meatballs, I will never make them any other way again! These are full of flavor with Italian breadcrumbs, cheese, and a hint of tomato. I promise, they are just as delicious as the fried versions and incredibly moist and flavorful.  Yum.

Add the final ingredients to your soup! Mix in fresh spinach, freshly chopped basil, and the juice of one lemon. Give your soup a taste and check your seasonings. Ladle into bowls and serve with a side of my Portuguese White Bread, Pumpkin Cornbread Muffins, an Artisan Loaf, or my Homemade Whole Wheat Bread to make a delicious accompaniment.

California Italian Wedding Soup

8 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 can (2 cups) beef broth
1 lemon, zested (save the juice for finishing the dish)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 carrots, chopped into uniform pieces
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup pasta (preferably orzo or small shells)
1 pound of prepared meatballs (see recipe below)
2 cups fresh baby spinach
2 tablespoons freshly chopped basil
Juice from one lemon
Parmesan cheese (for sprinkling on your finished bowls)

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add noodles and cook until tender. Drain, and rinse under cool running water. Meanwhile, in  a large saucepan or Dutch oven, saute the carrots in two tablespoons of olive oil for five minutes to start your soup base or you can skip this step and proceed as directed, if you desire a crunchier vegetable. Add the minced garlic and cook for one minute (being careful to not allow the garlic to burn).   Heat up the broth (chicken & beef) and add the zest of one lemon, allowing the broth to simmer.   Gently add your cooked meatballs to the pot.  Reduce heat and cook until the meatballs are heated through. Toss in a handful of fresh chopped basil, the juice of one lemon, and fresh spinach.  Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Baked Turkey Meatballs

This recipe will give you a double batch of meatballs. I recommend using the other half of this recipe for our Homemade Spaghetti & Meatballs, Rotini With Turkey Meatballs, or a fun make-your-own meatball sub night for a busy weeknight dinner!

1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound Italian turkey sausages (remove the casings)
1 pound lean ground beef

In a medium bowl, stir together the bread crumbs, parsley, eggs, milk,tomato paste,Parmesan cheese, and the salt and pepper. Add the turkey & ground beef, then gently stir to combine. Make your meatballs the standard size and put them on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for ten to fifteen minutes. When done cooking, drop in the baked meatballs for a few minutes. This will be just as delicious with a lot less mess and fewer calories.

This concludes my soup series as we move into fun grilling ideas and dishes for Spring. I hope you have gotten a little soup inspiration here and are enjoying the picture tutorials to go along with our recipes too! I would love to hear your feedback!

This soup… oh, this soup. Words seem indescribable to explain how it tastes like love, like comfort, and like coming home. If ever there was a soup that a girl could be proud of, this is my soup. It is rich and creamy tasting, but lightened with lemon. It is, in my humble opinion, the best pot of soup I have ever made.

Let me not say that this comes without effort. The day I made this soup our kitchen was a roaring 500 degrees, I was stripped down to my workout clothes and my hair was in a frizzy singed state from leaning into an oven to flip pitas. I mistakenly had picked up cilantro to garnish my soup instead of parsley and there were bits of food all over my sad apparel. As my sweaty hand clutched my camera to take the preparation pictures,  I sadly watched my soup getting colder by the minute garnished with cilantro (my least favorite seasoning) for that perfect finish photo. At that moment,  I heard something roaring in my head….

“THIS IS NUTS.”

Then I sat down and I ate it…and every moment of crazy was worth this effort. The soup kept giving to me for an easy midweek lunch, a shared lunch with a good friend, and then the final bowl was enjoyed this weekend.

Those moments of effort seem worth the crazy sometimes. And crazy is likely what my husband thought when he saw me sweating, red-faced, in my tank top with a singed hair halo around my pink face…but he & my kids agreed it was worth mommy’s crazy for a bowl of this.

The beginning preparation will look familiar to you if you have prepared my Chicken & Noodle Soup. We are going to chop some carrots for our soup base. I like four carrots, but you can do more or less, depending on how many carrots you like in your soup.

In a large pot, drizzle a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and drop your carrots into the pot. Season these with salt and pepper. Let them cook for five minutes to get a good base to your quick soup going.

Juice a couple of lemons to add to your chicken broth. You will need 1/2 a cup of juice for this recipe. Please use real lemons, not the bottled stuff…it really is worth it!

Pour eight cups of low-sodium chicken broth into your pot that is filled with the carrots.  Add the juice of the lemons to the pot and season with another round of salt and pepper. Bring this liquid to a nice, slow simmer.

Take advantage of a sale like I did, and snag a rotisserie chicken to use for your soup. Rest your bird in the simmering liquid and let it cook for fifteen minutes, allowing the seasonings from the bird to season your broth. Oh, this is going to be so delicious!

In a separate pot, bring a pot of water to a boil. Season generously with a little salt. Add 1 cup of orzo pasta to this pot and cook as directed. Once, it is cooked, drain the pasta and set it aside for your soup.

Carefully pull your chicken out and dice the meat from the bird for your soup. Let it rest for a few minutes while you finish your soup base.

Now comes your secret ingredient to the creaminess of your soup…egg yolk. Whisk three egg yolks in a separate bowl. Now you need to temper your egg yolks (sounds fancy, but it is not),  by adding a little of the hot soup base to your eggs and then whisking the heck out of it.  By adding a little of the hot liquid to your egg yolks, you are preventing a scrambled egg mess in your soup. Once you have added some of this hot liquid to the eggs and whisked it, you can whisk the egg mixture into your whole pot of soup. Again, whisk the heck out of it. Don’t freak out- you got this!

Add back in your chicken and the orzo pasta. Stir and ladle immediately into bowls garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

You can serve your soup with store-bought pitas, or you can give my bread machine pita recipe a shot. I highly recommend at least attempting this recipe sometime, these homemade pitas are heavenly and are so yummy, hot out of the oven.  The best part, is that your bread machine can do all of the hard work for you!

Greek Lemon Chicken Soup

8 cups chicken broth

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

4 carrots, chopped

1 cup cooked orzo pasta

Diced, cooked chicken meat (from a rotisserie chicken)

Lemon slices, fresh parsley, salt & pepper for seasoning & garnish)

3 egg yolks

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add orzo noodles and cook until tender. Drain, and rinse under cool running water. Meanwhile, in  a large saucepan or Dutch oven, saute the carrots in two tablespoons of olive oil for five minutes to start your soup base or you can skip this step and proceed as directed, if you desire a crunchier vegetable.  Heat up broth and fresh lemon juice and bring it to a simmer. Gently add your rotisserie chicken and all of the drippings from the pan and put a lid on your pot.  Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 15 minutes.  Pull out your chicken and set aside to dice.  Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks until light in color. Gradually add some of the hot soup to the egg yolks, stirring constantly. Return the egg mixture to the soup pot and heat through. Add the orzo and chicken. Ladle hot soup into bowls and garnish with lemon slices. Toss in a handful of fresh chopped parsley and ladle into bowls.

Side note: If you like a thicker soup base, you can melt two tablespoons of butter and then spoon two tablespoons of flour in the pot, after you have cooked your carrots. Add a little of your chicken broth to the flour & butter and whisk it, then whisk the rest of your soup broth and lemon juice in, to help prevent lumps. This will give you a thicker base to your soup broth.

Pita Bread (for the Bread Machine)

1 1/3 cup water
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons yeast

Put ingredients into the bread machine in order listed. Run the dough cycle on your machine. When the bread machine beeps, pull the dough out of the bread machine and divide the dough into ten pieces. Roll each piece into a six inch circle. Place these on a baking sheet (or your pizza stones) and let them rise for twenty minutes (I can fit about four rounds per pizza stone or three pitas per baking sheet). Bake at 500 degrees for three minutes. Using a spatula, flip the pitas and cook for another three to four minutes on the flip side.

Side Note: When you pull the pitas off of your baking sheet, wrap them into a damp kitchen towel for a few minutes. This helps keep them from drying out. Once they are cool, you can store them in a food storage bag. Freeze extras for a rainy day! After the pitas have cooled, slip a piece of wax paper between them and store in a freezer bag. You can take out what you need…when you need it!

What is a dish that you are so proud of, but feels like it takes a lot of effort to make? I would love to hear your crazy kitchen confessions!

With the new year in full swing, I have been trying to make a conscious effort to get back to healthier eating.

I think our family eats relatively healthy… with the exception that we tend to be carb-loving fools and could really benefit from cutting back on the pasta and bread in our house.

I am trying to incorporate more meat-free nights, embrace those whole grains, encouraging lots of fruit and veggie eating, and adding lots more fish into our diet.

I am hoping to share a few of the ways that we are working on our healthy eating in our house as well as share the recipe success stories from our kitchen.

I love grilled fish and once a week  I have been trying  to prepare a marinade for a quick and easy weeknight dinner.

In the winter months, I rely on our little indoor grill a lot to get that delicious grilled flavor without being outside and braving the cold.

A few holidays ago, I spent my Christmas money on a Cuisinart 5-in-1 griddle at a home goods store.

It was the last one on the shelf and missing the griddle portion of it so I got it for a 75 percent discount.

I ran home with it and couldn’t wait to start making fancy panini sandwiches on it and grilling our food on it.

At the time, we had an electric stove and it was the perfect way to enjoy our grilled foods in the winter.

Now that we have a gas stove, I have longed for a grill pan to rest on top of my burners.

Of course, it isn’t anything I truly need so I continue to give our little Cuisinart a good workout in our kitchen.

It is a handy little gadget that has served us well in the winters and you can’t beat a fancy panini and soup night in these cold winter months.

My new favorite salmon recipe is this Slammin’ Salmon marinade that is perfect for quick cooking and getting dinner on the table in a hurry.

This marinade is rich and flavorful with a good balance of sweetness on the fish. I paired this with my easy microwave lemon broccoli and brown rice for a filling and satisfying dinner.  

Everyone absolutely love this marinade.

My husband & I loved it for the flavor it added to our salmon, my daughter loved it because it is pink, and my son…well, he will eat just about anything.  

This recipe is definitely a keeper for our family.

Below is our modified version of this delicious marinade!

Give it a try and see if you can’t find a new way to appreciate seafood in your house.

Slammin’ Salmon Marinade (Adapted from AllRecipes.com)

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 cup olive oil
8 (4 ounce) skinless, boneless salmon fillets

Stir balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, and soy sauce with salt, brown sugar, ground ginger, paprika, pepper, and red pepper flakes until the salt has dissolved. Stir in garlic, sesame oil, and olive oil until well combined.. Pour marinade into a resealable plastic bag or glass bowl. Add salmon to marinade and gently toss to coat. Place into refrigerator and marinate 2 to 4 hours. Prepare your grill for medium-high heat. Drain excess marinade from salmon fillets. Grill until firm and opaque, about 4 minutes per side (may need shorter cooking time depending on the thickness of your salmon fillets).

Looking for other fun ways to enjoy adding seafood into your diet? Be sure to check out our other recipes: 

Balsamic & Rosemary Salmon

Marinated Grilled Shrimp

 Herb Baked Tilapia 

What is your favorite way to incorporate fish into your family’s diet?  Feel free to share your favorite recipes and links!