When it’s cold outside, the best way to warm up is to make vegetable soup in the crockpot and start a fire.   In our house, this is our idea of comfort.  Cozy blankets, hot soup, blazing fire.  Yep, that’ll fix the frostbite in no time.

Recipe for my Mamaw’s vegetable soup:

Frozen bag of mixed vegetables, frozen black eye peas, frozen baby limas, 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 can of tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons of minced garlic, 2 cups of beef broth, and 2 cups of water.  The secret ingredient that I love about this soup is adding elbow macaroni in the crockpot 1 hour before dinner time.  If you add it sooner, it will overcook and turn to mush.  Feel free to add ham cubes, a hambone, or even browned hamburger meat. Cook in the crockpot on high for 4 hours or low for 8.

For the photographers out there, here are my camera settings for this fire image:

I set my dial to the SHUTTER priority, and set my shutter speed to 2.5 seconds.  The camera adjusted my aperture to f32, and my ISO was 640.  I did not use a tripod, as I should have with a 2.5 second shutter speed.  Instead I rested my elbows on my knees and held my breath:) You don’t want to move with such a slow shutter speed!