Bahama Mama's Tortilla Soup Recipe

My senior year in high school I worked at this place

Rumbi Island Grill

its like a fast casual place that serves 'Island Food' Which  is basically mostly rice bowls. Not sure if that is island food but whatever... But anyway I worked there for a year and in that time I fell in love with a soup they serve there. It was called 'Bahama Mama's Tortilla Soup'

It was amazing, and probably the first restaurant I had ever ordered soup at. I am not a huge soup person and I always felt like it was a waste to order soup and I usually only ever like Chicken Noodle soup. But after working there for a while, I eventually got sick of rice bowls and had to expand my horizons to getting soup.

It is one of the best soups ever!! Eventually I got the recipe online somewhere (I didn't work in the kitchen so I didn't know the exact recipe) and I have been making this baby for the last year or so. Its delicious.

Bahama Mama's Tortilla Soup

3 chicken Breasts

8 C. chicken broth

1 C water

1 carrot shaved thin

1 C. chopped onion

1/4 tsp all spice

1/2 tsp thyme

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbsp Ginger

1 T Garlic

1 c. chopped tomato

1 (14 oz) can coconut milk

1 tsp hot pepper sauce

1 c. mozzarella cheese

2 c. white tortilla strips (fried or baked)

2 limes wedged

Grill chicken, cut into small chunks.

In large pot combine chicken, water, broth, and carrot. Add thyme, all spice, cinnamon, ginger, and garlic. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Then lower temp to med. and let simmer for about 10 minutes. Pour in tomato, hot sauce and coconut milk. Ladle into bowls top with cheese and tortilla strips. Squeeze lime juice over. Serve.

It tastes exactly like the one they make at Rumbi Grill.

It is a very thin brothy soup, which are my favorite kinds. But man it is amazing. I always add extra lime juice, cause I love lime juice on everything... And I fried my tortilla strips and a couple were a little extra crispy, but in the soup they tasted fine, next time I am just baking them, so much easier! (can you buy tortilla strips? That would be even easier?)

Here is another pic with less broth so you can see the chunkiness. (This is my bowl with the no cheese!) prior to having the tortilla strips. I didn't put tomatos in cause I didnt feel like it with them being so gross this time of year.

This post is making me hungry. Now I want to go eat leftover soup for lunch, and its only 930! I need breakfast.



Wowie! Look at these Beauties.

So I usually surf through some blogs, especially linky parties, to get great ideas. I found some way awesome stuff out there and thought I would share it with ya. 

So here are some crafts and a recipe that I thought were amazing, and I will probably try out most probably all of them, cause I can't stop crafting!

Check out this great bookmark tutorial at Bugaboo

I am in Love with this LOVE banner. Jessica sells these babies, and right now if you head over to These Are the Days you can enter in a give away for them that she is having. AWESOME!

{Plus Jessica is my auntie-in-law, so you have to check it out hehe}

I am in love with this rosette headband. How gorgeous is this.

Check out Borrowed and Bleu to see the tutorial.

Scissors and a Whisk got me wanting to whisk up this yummy Nutella hot chocolate recipe.

How adorable is this Valentines Day wreath?? She has a tutorial on how to do it. It is super easy and how perfectly cute is it. Head over to Kevin and Jessica to see how its done.

More Recipes and Chicken Noodle--Fast!

So I didn't get all the recipes done I wanted to do last week. I mean I did five last week which is what I wanted to do, but there were still a couple I wanted to share with all of you. So I will still be adding some more recipes this week as well to get through all the ones I wanted to do. And then after that I will keep doing more recipes as before but week of recipes will be done for a bit.

Here is an idea that I wanted to share with all of you that I thought was soo cute!

Chicken Noodle Soup in a Jar!!

How freaking cute is that.

My mother-in-law gave me this little jar of soup mix for Christmas among other things.

I thought it was so cute. What a great gift. This would make like a great neighbor gift for any time of the year! Especially since it is so cold and gross out right now.

So this little baby came with a jar of egg noodles (I think thats what they were, I only ever buy spaghetti noodles, someone want to help out here and confirm what these noodles are?) with some spices and flavorings inside the jar, and then she put a can of chicken on top and what you needed to add to it.

Sorry, kinda blurry, my camera really had a hard time taking close ups. Stupid thing!

So I don't know her exact recipe, I was going to ask her, but I forgot, but here is one I found on the internet that looks pretty similar click HERE for it. The recipe my mother-in law gave me and the web recipe both calls for water as your base, the one I linked to said 8 c. water, my mother in law said she tried her recipe with just the water and said it was bland, so I would recommend doing half of that chicken or veggie broth.

But man, I cooked it up, and it was fabulous! And so easy! I just added broth, carrots, onions and celery and it was done.

And my hubby loved it! I think we both had seconds

Yeah we usually don't eat up at the table, and I could have gotten up to take a nice picture, but I was hungry, so I had my hubby take a quick one before I dug in.

In a few weeks I am going to post a recipe for my mom's Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup, with homemade noodles, which is also super yummy so get ready for that!

'Be Mine' Boxes

Look what I made...

Lovely 'Be Mine' Boxes

I am in love with these.
I got the idea at Craft-O-Maniac

I bought these boxes at the dollar store

They were kind of by the gift bags and stuff like that. The small tan one was inside the larger red one, so I got six of these babies for three bucks! SCORE.

They were okay lookin, but not the prettiest, so I fancied them up.

Add a little bit of Mod Podge to the box, put some cardstock on them, and voila, they are twenty times more cute.

So if you want to do this too, you just get your mod podge, paint it on the box and then put some paper that you have cut out and stick it on there, smooth it out so there are no bubbles and then do the same with all box sides. Once it was pretty dry I then repainted it with mod podge over the paper that I had put on, you don't have to, I just think it makes it have a cooler look and feel, it doesnt' look as much like paper to me. But if you do the extra layer on top, don't do it until the first coat under the paper is dry or else it will bubble up!

Here they all are before I put the words on and decorated them.

I think its most fun if you do the lids of the boxes a different paper than the boxes themselves, I have this great big Damask paper book and so I just used all the red and pink prints from that, so they all match.

I wasn't sure how to get cute letters on them, and heaven knows I can't paint them on there, so my lovely aunt let me borrow her cricuit! Can I tell you how much I love that thing. I am using it for everything and like cutting out a ton of letters for future crafts before I give it to her. Thanks for letting me using Bonnie!

So I cut these 'Be Mine' letters out, I thought about doing them different prints too, or at least different colors, like red and pink but I thought that might be too much. so I did them all white and then took a stamp pad to the edges.

Next, mod podge those on too.

See the white, its the mod podge.

Now that they are dry add some ribbon or something to jazz it up. I used ribbon and netting. I wish I had some cute red buttons, but I don't... :(

The E is my fav. I love the big bow on top that is made out of netting.

So in all, this project cost me $3.00

I already had all the other stuff on hand.

You can't beat that.

So like I said earlier, Craft-O-Maniac gave me the idea, She did these cool NOEL boxes for Christmas, and I was all for dollar store stuff! I looked at her blog after I finished these things and found she has done a ton more of these too, so go check that out if you want more inspiration. They are cute.

Week of Recipes, Day #5 (spotlights)

Week of Recipes, Day #5

Ok here are three recipes from this blog I love Oopsey Daisey

It was the first blog I found and she had a ton of great recipes.

Here is my absolute fave of her recipes.

Cafe Rio Burritos

If you life in, or around Utah, Cafe Rio is like the best place ever to eat, they have burritos to die for. And while its not like authentic, its like AMAZING! So if you can't go to Cafe Rio, try these cause my mouth is watering just thinking about them. I have tried many knock off recipes for these pork burritos, but this is the closest.

To get the recipe go to this page. I could have posted the recipe, but she has it all step-by-step and with yummy pictures so why do work that has already been done great?

Snickerdoodle Muffins

From the same blog, these are soo good. They are like snickerdoodles in cake form. I make these all the time and they are perfect! I start to crave them now.

{P.S. Don't eat these in bed at night, I did and they got all over, my husband was very displeased when he woke up with cinnamon and sugar crumbs all over the bed!  Or am I the only weirdo who eats food in the bed?}

Click HERE for the recipe

Can you see the writing?

So someone left a comment on here that said they can't read some of the writing on my post cause my background is covering it. But when I view my blog it looks perfectly normal/readable to me... I have tried on a few different computers too and its all showing up ok.

So if you can't read some parts of my blog let me know and I will try to fix it.

Also if you can't see it, please tell me what internet browser your using ( internet explorer, firefox, safari, chrome.... ) And also if you can tell me if your using a Mac, Windows system, or a Linux System and then I can know a bit more about the problem.

I can't fix it cause I can't see the problem... And I want everyone to see my blog or what is the point of writing this thing?

Zucchini Bread

Week of Recipes, Day # 4

Zucchini Bread

I don't remember where I found this recipe, but I love it. I made it last night at ten, I had a weird craving for it last night. I get weird cravings a lot, I can't tell you how many times I made my husband take me on late night runs to Artic Circle (a local burger place) to get fries or a chocolate mint oreo shake with fudge (Try it, now!) I don't know what we are going to do when I get pregnant someday, those cravings are going to be crazy.

Zucchini Bread

2 1/2  C. Sugar

3 eggs

3 C. Flour

1 Tbsp vanilla

1 c. oil

2 c. Grated Zucchini (I just use one zucchini and its usually only like 1 1/2 c. but its ok)

1/4 tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 C. Chopped Nuts

3 tsp cinnamon

Mix everything together in a bowl, pour into bread pan. I don't know what size, mine doesn't say a size so I don't know what size it is, but for me the batter fills my regular sized one and a smaller one.

Bake at 350 Degrees for one hour.

This is the only recipe I have made of zucchini bread, and I absolutely love it. The outside is a bit crunchy. The first time I made it I was like, 'Oh my gosh I cooked it too long,' but then I tasted it and fell in love, the outside is my favoritest part, its like sweet and sugary and just lovely!!

UPDATE:

I have made this recipe lots more and still love it. But I have tweeked it to make it more healthy and still oh so delicious. 

I do half wheat flour, half white flour; decrease the sugar to 1 3/4 Cups; and add 1 C. applesauce instead of the oil. It is still amazing, but doesn't carry as much guilt. 

But if you want to stick to the original recipe, that is yummy too!