1.  Woo buddy, it’s been a week. Let’s give it up for Friday!

2.  Every day felt eons longer what with the drive time.

3.  After school pickup. Basketball drop-off. Basketball pickup. An appointment to keep or errands to run.

4.  It was ne-ver-end-ing.

5.  And we’re only just now halfway through T-man’s time in the boot. As of Sunday anyway.

6.  Make no mistake about it, T getting his driving privileges back will be a Christmas gift for all of us. Bless.

7.  I have 100% embraced soup season, people. High 50s?  Okey dokey, time to break out the soups, baby.

8.  And here’s where I feel compelled to drop a disclaimer. I’m no food blogger.

9.  This is painfully obvious if you’ve ever meandered through food blogs out there.

10.  They’re filled with amusing cooking anecdotes and gorgeous photos of meals in progress. It’s like glorious foodie porn.

11.  Me? I just toss out recipes I’ve really enjoyed and maybe add a tip or two.

12.  I guess all that’s to say temper your expectations.

13.  Or I’m sorry you showed up here and stumbled into a pseudo food blog post.

14.  Or maybe both, I don’t know. Anyhoo.

15.  I love tortilla soup. And when I say I love tortilla soup I mean I can eat bowls of the stuff then mourn that I can’t cram more in my body.

16.  I’ve tried a couple of recipes over the last year or two but none were quite right. Until this glorious Chicken Tortilla Soup.

17.  First of all the prep work is ridiculously simple. Chop an onion and mince some garlic. Boom – you’re done.

18.  If you’re having one of those days then use garlic from a jar. The world won’t end.

19.  This go ’round is when I finally discovered the Instant Pot chicken breast hack.

20.  Every time I have a soup that calls for chicken I kill myself trying to grill it while working on the soup. The chicken invariably takes longer than expected and I get all stressed out trying to juggle too many moving pieces.

21.  This time I just popped that chicken into my Instant Pot and poof! Ready to go by the time I needed it.

22.  Note: Americans buy chicken breasts that look like they’re on steroids. Two breasts weighed about 1.6 pounds total so they took more like 8-10 minutes of pressure cooking.

23.  Anyway, this soup is really simple but the step that made the difference was scooping out some of the ingredients, putting them in a blender, and processing until smooth. You’ll add this back to the pot and end up with a delicious creamy soup with the perfect amount of chunks.

24.  Listen, this sounds super complicated but I promise it’s not and you’ll swoon over the results. Trust me.

25.  Now in case you haven’t noticed we make a whole lot of Mexican food and I wasn’t willing to give up the search for a corn chowder.

26.  I tried making this one in October and it was greeted with a resounding meh.

27.  But this week I gave this Creamy Mexican Chicken and Corn Soup a shot and got a solid thumbs up from the crowd.

28.  I made mine with chicken stock and used that Instant Pot trick for cooking chicken while I worked.

29.  Believe it or not this one has even less prep than the tortilla soup and can be tossed together in twenty minutes or so. A delicious dinner ready in half an hour? SOLD.

30.  Clearly I’ve gotten my cooking mojo back. I went off the rails a bit during election week but now we’re good to go.

31.  I came late the the cooking game, you know. I spent years honing my baking skills then muddled through with decent-enough regular food.

32.  These days there really is no higher compliment for me than saying I made something that’s “restaurant quality.” That gives me all the feels.

33.  It does make ordering takeout oddly complicated, though, since I won’t get stuff I know I make better.

34.   We’ll chalk that up to covid complications and call it a day.

35.  So all the fur babies are doing pretty well.

36.  Mia’s still not an enormous fan of the new kitty. She did spend time with him through the gate without hissing so that’s progress.

37.  Gracie got her official introduction yesterday morning. Kitty was a bit taken aback by her giganticness but Gracie was solidly unbothered by a little hissing.

38.  Eventually Gracie laid in the hall with her nose at the gate and held very still while he checked her out. Except for that happy tail that whap-whap-whapped against the wall.

39.  Phoebe had her official introduction yesterday afternoon. Things went much better than they did with Mia, probably because she was curled up in my lap in the hallway and loves cure all ills. She’s just a very chill presence with cats and new kitty responded well to it.

40.  And now, last but not least, we have a (new) name for boy kitty. We welcome Seven to our band of furry critters.