I recently checked out a couple of the Moosewood cookbooks. Not because I'm planning to go vegetarian, but because I have always heard good things about the cookbooks and I was looking for some new ideas, including especially new soup recipes.

My children are a bit strange and happen to love and adore lima beans. For the weekly soup snack at The Boy's school, he gets a bit annoyed if I don't bring lima beans. When I make vegetable soup at home, it had better have lima beans and I've spent time at the Indian buffet picking lima beans out of the vegetable biryani for the kids. A recipe for succotash chowder caught my eye, because they also like chowders.

I made the chowder two nights ago and it turned out really well, although I kind of violated the idea of a vegetarian meal by throwing some chicken boullion in the milk. Last night we had some left over, but I exactly wasn't in the mood for the soup again and there wasn't really all that much left. I cooked some short grain brown rice (2 cups water with chicken boullion, a bit of butter and a cup of rice), sauteed some diced carrots in olive oil and made up a bread crumb topping with some bread that was getting stale, melted butter, sharp white cheddar and parsley. Once the carrots and rice were cooked, I combined them, stirred in the leftover soup (I imagine about 2 cups worth), dumped it in a casserole dish and sprinkled it with the bread crumb mixture. I baked it for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

The result was marvelous. The kids gobbled it up and told me that it was one of their favorite dishes (having lima beans in it helps, of course).

For dessert (and breakfast this morning) I made muffins from my newest cookbook The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook -- corn and apricot muffins with orange essence. I loved them. My husband loved them. The Boy ate them after picking out all the apricots and The Middle Girl wouldn't touch them. The Toddler Girl will eat anything. I told you my children weren't normal.