one trick or treater tonight by the time I got home from work.  Tony only gave out six pieces of candy before I came home.  We were even sitting on our deck, bowl of candy in sight, and people walked right by us!  So since I thought we’d be sitting outside, and I really didn’t feel like cooking tonight, we ordered a pizza!

Yes, I know, I make good homemade pizza, but we did order deep dish, which is something I can’t make.  I ended up having 1 1/2 slices – um, sausage and bacon!

Tony did the grocery shopping today, and got me the ingredients for my Blogger Secret Ingredient recipe – this weeks ingredient is PEARS!  Here is the link to this week’s host: www.itzyskitchen.blogspot.com.

At first I was going to do a baked pear with goat cheese filling with a balsamic glaze, but www.fitnessista.com beat me to it!  So on to plan B!

But we tossed around some ideas and came up with this SO simple soup that I think would be an awesome first course for not only a dinner party, but for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Pear Blue Cheese Soup with Blue Cheese Crostini

  • 14.5 ounce chicken broth (can easily be substituted with veggie broth to make vegetarian)
  • 2 medium sized pears, peeled and sliced
  • 2 ounces blue cheese
  • 1.5 ounce pancetta, diced and pan fried (then cooled)
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • sprinkle of Paprika

Put broth in pot and add sliced pears.  Cook until pears are soft enough to blend with a stick blender – mine took about 10 or 12 minutes.  Remove from heat, stir in blue cheese and add salt, pepper and paprika.

Tony got this squash from the store for a dollar – I think its called delicata squash?  It makes a nice presentation!  Pour soup in squash (or bowl!) and sprinkle fried pancetta and serve with crostini.

For the crostini, I just lightly buttered a piece of french bread, added about .3 ounces of blue cheese and put under the broiler.  This would be a simple make ahead recipe, because you would only need to warm it up to serve.  EDIT:  I forgot to add that this soup is not overly sweet – extremely savory with just a hint of the sweetness from the pears.  We were both pleasantly surprised not having any kind of soup like this before!

pears simmering
pears simmering

After loading the final pics on picasa, I decided I liked two:

So I hope everyone had more trick or treaters than us!  My mom is coming over tomorrow and we are going to our first Christmas craft fair!  Um, I might see some snowmen I just have to have!  See you at breakfast!