Yellowstone 2012 Photos

In August of 2012 I visited Yellowstone National Park with my family for a short vacation.  The weather ended up being great and it was really a photographers dream trip.  There was a lot of people but we really did not have to wait in line much around the park.  I took a ton of photos but narrowed them down quite a bit to my favorites. I have 5 photos posted below and then more in my Gallery Link.  The new gallery is HTML5 so it’s compatible with all of your mobile devices!

 

Minestrone

This morning I decided I need to make something hearty and mostly healthy to eat for the next couple of days.  After looking through some things I decided on Minestrone Soup.  This is a favorite of mine but one I had not made before.  After looking up some recipes it was not difficult and decided to go at it. I really like Allrecipies.com to find good dishes.  They always have lots of reviews, with people making suggestions on how to make them better.

Minestrone soup is most often a vegetarian dish, however I had some ground beef I wanted to use, so I started with that.  Next added the aromatics to make a mirepoix with some red wine and tomato paste.  I added about 1/2 of my stock and some Quinoa in place of about 1/2 the pasta to make the soup healthier.  Since this has a long cooking time I added it early.  I added the rest of the ingredients minus the spinach and zucchini since I did not have any.  I let it simmer for probably about 40 minutes until the vegetables were al dente added my pasta and let it cook for about another 10 minutes.  Minestrone Soup I  and Jamie’s Minestrone.

The end result was quite good.  The quinoa was a good substation and I am glad I put it in.  This made a dutch oven full so lots of taste leftovers.  It should freeze well too.