Cooking "TV Soup" with My Mom!

Okay, I'm super excited about today. I'm all about learning new things, and today I'm going to learn to make my mom's, one of my personal favorite recipes, veggie soup. It can be called a TV soup, which is the turkey and veggie soup. You can make a vegan style. You can also add meat, your choice. Now you know with me, we gonna do some good eating, okay? So welcome in to the kitchen. This is serious. We about to get down. As you know with Leave it to LaToya, I already told y'all I'm introducing you guys to my family, my friends, my closest people to me, okay? This is Mama Pam, my mom. Also affectionately known as Go-Go. That's what my kids call her. Why did you go with Go-Go, mom? I know the reasons, but let's tell the people why you went with Go-Go. Because a lot of people ask. Well, I started out with Goldie. Yes. And it's a little long for me. A little long for my childhood. She just said, they gonna call you Go-Go. Yep. Which is cool, because we found out that Go-Go is grandmother. Grandmother in South African. So it's all worked, and the kids, Go-Go. They say Go-Go. Go-Go, I want Go-Go, Go-Go. Girl. I love it. We in the kitchen with Go-Go, and we about to make some vegetable soup with a twist. How do we start, first of all? Well, let's wash our hands. First things first. Yes. Sanitary. We got to be. Wash our hands. Now I always smell this cooking in the kitchen. I'm never really around to watch it. I just enjoy the way it tastes. And I've been wanting to get the recipe, but she makes it like super duper quick. By the time I get in there, it's done. This is like one of those quick dishes you can throw on for the kids real quick when they come home from school. It's good, it's hearty. And I sometimes eat two to three bowls myself, but there's no judgment here, right? Okay. The first thing we start with is we kind of season our beef. Get a little olive oil. Take a little bit of the garlic. Seasoning. Check. Start smelling the aroma. This is when you start smelling it in the kitchen. Yeah, anytime garlic is cooking, I like it. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, ooh, something about to get fancy. It's about to be real good. Whatever's happening. Do you have a family favorite? Is there one favorite thing that you love to make in the kitchen or it's a favorite that your mom or your dad or your grandmother makes? I want to see it in the comments below because I need all the recipes I can get. Okay, we're going to not chop it up, but just kind of cut at it. Oh, I want to do that. That's my favorite part. All right. I'm going to say this, and I know that there's been times people cooking and seasoning meat all the way. You know, ain't nothing like no bland food, honey. But this, I can tell you, I can tell you for sure, this is good seasoned meat. So, oh my God, it smells good, y'all. It smells amazing. I'm going to tell you that. Normally, I would season my ground beef before cooking it. You can season it in a dish or something, but I like the garlic and seasoning as it's cooking. And then you add in your peppers, your onions. Add a little bit of that into this so that meat will be seasoned. Not all of it, because we're going to save some of that for the soup. Perfect. Now just stir that up in there. All right, all right, all right. And you're going to add a little bit of seasoning before you stir. Okay. Add seasoning. I add seasoning for everything. Okay, because I was about to say, this soup got flavor, y'all. Right now, I'm cutting up some celery. Are you guys cooking this at home? I love vegetables in my soup. Ma, are there any more ingredients I need to add before? Should I cut my heat down a little bit? You can cut it down so that seasoning can go into what we have. Is there a top? Oh, we can put this top on it right here? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay, and we're getting these carrots ready to chop up. Some people like chunky. My mom likes chunky vegetables in. Not the kind where they're all minced. When I would come home off the road, this is what I would beg her to cook. Okay, go ahead and drop this in. Okay. Put a little seasoning on that. I season every vegetable before it goes in. And the seasoning I use doesn't have a lot of salt in it, but I like to make sure that that seasoning goes into everything, the meat, the vegetables. And this is on simmer, right? Do I need to cut it on low? No, you can simmer it. So, Toya, why do you want to learn this recipe? I want to learn because, one, I have kids now, and I want to make sure that I'm cooking them healthy meals. I don't want them eating out all the time. And I'm like, okay, if Gogo ain't, you know, he or she off vacation and doing her thing, I still want to be able to prepare the soup for them. I didn't cook at a young age. Of course, y'all know I started working at the age of like 12, 13. I wasn't in the kitchen with my mom. And a lot of people ask, well, you know, you from the South, you should know how to get down. I don't know how to get down, okay? I just, I'm so used to hurry up and get you something to eat because you got to go back to this. Hurry up and grab something before you go on stage. Grab something while you're on set. That has literally been my entire life. Now that I have more time and I'm more in control of my schedule, I want to make time to learn how to cook more of my favorite dishes. I want my kids to see me cooking their favorite meal. Like I think that there's so much love that goes into that. So that's why we're doing this. Aw, that's beautiful. I mean. And I'm not surprised. And you're a quick learner. You might not remember you did bacon and eggs. Well, mama, you know I love to eat. So if I'm at a restaurant, I'll be like, is that paprika? It tastes a little, they put a little extra onion. That's some garlic in there. So we've got our potatoes. Got potatoes. So you want to go ahead and take those and put that in with the carrots. Okay. So they can cook a little bit. And when you, once you get that in and they cook just a little bit, we're going to add in cream of mushroom soup. I was about to say, do we need water now? Or is this good? Yes, we can go ahead and add. And I season these potatoes as well? Please, every last one of them. Do I season the water? I'm just kidding. Is that it? Is that enough? I'll put a little bit more. That's enough. There you go. And then add a little more seasoning. Yes, once you add that, yes. Okay, cool. We've got this on simmer. All right, cool. Let's get into it. So mom, I know we've talked about it briefly before. With me going out, you know, and pursuing my career at such a young age, your faith had to just be on another level to allow your child at the age of what, 12, 13? She wasn't a person that was like, oh, you have to be a doctor. You have to be a lawyer. You have to go to college. You have to do all these different things. She allowed me to really go for my career at the age of 12. And she never got in front of that at all. She was very supportive. And now being a mom, I'm like, put my babies in the next room. You know what I mean? Like, what y'all doing? Like, what's going on? I need the cameras. I need to see what's going on. She literally allowed me to go in the rehearsals and being way out of town. I lived in Atlanta at the age of 14 years old for like a whole year. Went to live in Oakland for almost a year. I remember I came back, I was like way taller than when I left. But anyways, what do you have to do mentally to just be at rest, at peace, knowing that your baby is going to be okay? It wasn't easy. I will say it had a lot to do with you. I knew at an early age when I'd see her go to the piano and play right before going to school, the thing that made me be a little relaxed and cool with things was how she communicated with me. And we had that rapport. She called me 10 times a day. I was right there and wanted to hear what she had to say just so we know what to do to move forward. My mom had to have a lot of faith and restraint to not jump in front of a few moving trains for me and let me experience, you know, whatever that was on my own. Let me learn from that life experience. Like how did you do that? I think life lessons are the best teacher. And as long as she was communicating with me as to certain things that were going on in her life and then consulted me and then we talked about it, I just prayed that you would always make good decisions and I was always confident that you would do that anyway. What was going through your mind? I feel like you saw something. You saw the bigger picture. Exactly. As an artist, I wanted you to focus on what you do best and what you were passionate about. And then mom had you over here with making sure that there were people in place, you know, counselors, anybody that understood that I made sure that you sat in front of them every time you could and became educated with what you needed to do to be, to fulfill your dreams and your passion. And I say this to people all the time, I have a very sensitive ear. When she's calling, is she okay? Does she need something? Do I need to go book my flight right now? I need to get where she's going. That was what I always relied on and then again, prayer. I knew God would protect her wherever she was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A solid moment was when Gavin did his first movie with Angela Bassett and Joe Martin, how you stayed in the trailer and you stuck right beside Angela Bassett and love, love, love how she just kind of surrounded you with love because you were really disturbed. I was 100%. You thought that that should have been you. We had conversation. Sorry for the shade, Gavin. I was just like, listen, I don't know why I didn't get to audition for the movie. I don't know what's going on here, but I need to be in front of the camera. I was so confident as a kid. Like, I literally, even right now in this moment and in my present years, I pray for the confidence that I had when I was a little girl. First of all, we had to have a real talk after that. I had to take you to your room, set you on your bed, and I said, this is not your time, but your time is coming. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, we had a conversation because you really were so disturbed because at that point you had taken piano lessons, you were doing ballet, you had done everything, probably anything a kid would do to pursue that thing because that was what you liked doing and that's what she enjoyed doing. So I put her in all those things and so when that happened, she was like, why not me? Okay, so mom, when it comes to men now, is there something specifically that you would have said to me at a younger age to prepare me for relationships? Oh. You gotta take a deep breath for that one. Yeah. I think that everybody's experience is different and even people that you meet, so learning that- Can I do that while you talk? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're gonna cut this sausage up and just kind of like cut it like that. Okay, go ahead. But learning about just kind of getting to know a person, spending time with them to get to know the type of, and a little bit about the background. My parents got divorced when I was 10. Matter of fact, they got divorced on my 10th birthday, right? So mom would tell me what she would want me to know about what was going on. I mean, I feel like she went into superhero mode and just would get things done. She just kept a smile on the whole time and I'm like, we don't know what she's going through. We don't know, I never got to see her cry or get emotional about anything. And now being in the same position, this thing is tough. Like, I wanna ask like, mom, why didn't you have more conversations? Or sometimes say, baby, it's hard. Like, mommy is trying. That, again, is another tough one. Oh, and wait, can I add this in here? Uh, yeah. Cause I can do that and you talk to the people real quick. Okay, cool. My parents were married 60 years, but my mom passed when she was 80. So they would have probably been married longer than that. It's coming from that environment to getting a divorce from actually from a childhood sweetheart. I would not wanna put on Toya my experience because it's really about the relationship with the person. You just made it look so easy though, mom. It wasn't easy at all. But I do feel like it's important that I would not wanna burden you guys down with something that you have no control of. And at that time, I didn't have answers. Am I adding this cream or mushroom yet? Yes, you can. Okay, cool. Do I put a little more seasoning in it? Yeah, every time. Ma, does this look right? It looks great. Now we can put the corn in. Ooh, baby, cause who loves corn? Gianna, Gigi. Gianna. My baby loves some corn, child. Okay. Ma, what about the rest of these cilantro and all that, should we eat the spinach? I'm gonna cut it up and the spinach, all of that's last. That's like the last five minutes. I gotta ask you, you were a single mom, you know, raising two kids. Like, I need the tea. I have a very solid family. My mom and I were best friends. And so God's there, got my mom, got my kids. I was okay and I knew God had me. The first thing, and I will tell you, I listened to a lot of Christian radio. Yeah, I remember, child, we was trying to listen to our secular R&B music. We was trying to listen to all our jams and we was listening to church radio all the way to school and from school. We had to beg like, Ma, I wanna hear, the kids is talking about a song at school. I wanna hear the song, okay? And I can't hear it if we listening to Christian radio all day. But I'm glad you did. We did not feel a bump along the way. There wasn't even a speed bump during the course of that. Well, I did pretty good then. No, you didn't. I did pretty good. I wasn't really dealing with my emotion and how I really felt, but what I knew was best for my whole family, including my ex-husband that I was divorcing. I felt like there were things that he needed, life lessons that he needed to learn and I needed to be strong, set my boundaries so that we as a family could continue to be strong. And I, to this day, love him from, you know, as a good, no, y'all probably don't feel that way because of outcome, but I do. This is somebody I knew way back when. They can't even be in the same room. Little things. Oh, Daryl. Well, because he has a... That's another thing, Mom, you gotta chill. I will say, when it comes to Gianna and Tyson, be a little bit more hands-off. When he's in a room and he's enjoying them and no, he's not gonna do everything the way you want done. He gonna be in they face, he gonna kiss them. Why? Because he don't get to spend the amount of time that you get to spend with him. I want you to be a little bit more hands-off when it comes to Dad being around Gianna and Tyson. Let him have his moments. Allow him to grandpaw-paw in the way he grandpaw-paws. I don't know what else to say. I think we've been talking so much, the soup is kind of boiling over over here. Yes, it is. Things get steamy, especially when you're trying to work through family matters. Is it hard for you to have difficult conversations with your mom, your dad, a family member? Because of course, these are the closest people to you and you're emotional about everything. I do feel like it's important to be heard and I wanna hear you. So, let's talk about it in the comments. There's no way that I could have gone through this whole divorce process, moving, everything in general without my mom and the care and the love that she has for her grandkids. I would rather them be in her care than anyone else's because she loves them as much as I do. So, I know my kids are in the best care when they're with their grandmother. But yes, sometimes those conversations can be super tough because you're not trying to be disrespectful. It's just like, no mom, this is the way I wanna do things. You might have done it that way with me and my brother, but this is the way I'm gonna do things with Gianna and Tyson. And this is what my instinct is telling me. And that's wonderful and I respect that. And it's so good to hear her say it. She tells me, but it's so good to hear her say it. Oh my goodness. Don't be scared. God, girl. And I just want you to know, really seriously, that you are the best mom. Thank you. You really, really, really are. Well, I learned from the best. Thank you. Woo, now I told y'all, okay? I told you, I already warned you, that Leave It To LaToya is about growth. It's about love. It's about working through the tough things, but with good intentions and respect. And so you just witnessed a bit of that. In good Texas fashion, we about to pull up, get some good hearty soup. Oh, okay. There it is. A little cheese and a little avocado. All right. Cheese first. Boom, boom, boom. Oh, come on now. Just sprinkle it over. And then do I have to make these avocados pretty? I would just cut it. The avocado's for garnishing and, of course, taste. Boom, okay, throw her right in the center, but watch how I do this. Okay, throw a little cilantro. I mean, ever so gently on the top of that. Baby, ain't that pretty? Oh my goodness. You did that, girl. It smells so good, y'all. I just smell cilantro and cheese and vegetables and turkey meat and... Ooh, baby! Okay, y'all, I didn't leave you out. Listen, I'm gonna make sure the recipe is in a link. You gotta make sure you subscribe so that you can get the link and get this amazing recipe for this. One of my favorites. I mean, seriously, I don't care what restaurant, can't touch my mama's soup, okay? I love it that much. So, also, once you make it, I wanna hear how it tasted. I know you guys are like, trying to smell it and catch the aroma, but I need you to make this for yourself, and I wanna hear how you felt about it after you made it in the comments, okay? Let us know. This be my bowl that you made for me? It can be your bowl, that's fine. Okay, okay, okay. Ooh, I got mine. Ooh, let's see, let's see. Oh my God. I got it! Ooh, baby, this'll heal the sick. My goodness, this is good. The flavor. The seasoning throughout, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk to her. Yeah, that's some good soup right there.