Today's lunch - soup!

Today I ate the rest of the leftover Garbanzo/Lentil soup from Sunday. Yumm.

The picture does not do this soup justice.

Applesauce, Garbanzo Lentil Soup, and Wild Rice Bread

Happy New Year!

We finally returned home to Brooklyn Saturday night and I made a few things for eating Sunday. The new thing: applesauce! The old thing: a version of my garbanzo/lentil soup. Yum. Oh, and one more new thing: wild rice bread.

Applesauce
We had a bunch of apples that were near the end of their lives, so I made them into applesauce. It was much easier than I had expected, and quite tasty. The recipe is easy: take the apples you have, peel, core, and chop them. Add them to a big pot (I had Aji do this step) and then add water, some vegan sugar, and cinnamon. For eight apples, we added approximately two cups of water, 1/4 cup natural sugar, and 1 tsp ground cinnamon. Cook, covered, until the apples are soft. Then, puree with a handheld blender or mash with a fork. Et viola, applesauce!

Wild rice bread
I've been on a bread making kick lately. I dug out the breadmaker from storage and I've been making loaves at least once a week. I have a rye bread that I really like (but Jacqui doesn't). As soon as I figure out the water content for it, I will post that recipe. I've also been making a teff bread at my mom's that Jacqui loves. It keeps inverting though, so I need to work on it a bit. :) This bread turned out lovely and was relatively easy to make. Enjoy it sliced, with applesauce, with butter, with jam. :)

Ingredients
1 1/3 cups cold water
3 T canola oil
3 T agave nectar
2 tsp sea salt (finally got iodized sea salt!)
1/3 cup rye flour
1/3 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3 cups bread flour (+4 T)
2 tsp bread yeast
1/2 cup wild rice
little bit of soy milk
4 T sunflower seeds

What to do
I made the dough in the breadmaker and then shaped the bread and baked it in the oven.
To make the dough, out the water, oil, agave in the bread maker. Then add the salt, rye flour, oats, whole wheat flour, and bread flour. Make two indentations for the yeast. Put it on the dough cycle. When it beeps to add ingredients, add the wild rice.
When the dough is finished in the breadmaker, if it is still wet, add the extra bread flour one Tablespoon at a time (I needed to add 4T) and knead. Shape the bread into a round or oblong loaf (or you could get fancy and make three strands and braid it together, but I didn't!).
Cover with a cloth and place in a warm spot to rise. Preheat the oven to 375F. (I put the bread on top of the stove to rise using the heat of the oven as it warmed up.)
When the bread has doubled in size, brush the top with the milk and sprinkle the sunflower seeds on top.
Bake it for 25-30 minutes (or longer, as needed) until it is golden, a knife or skewer stuck in the middle comes out dry and not sticky, and the bread sounds hollow if you knock it on the bottom. My bread took about 45 minutes because my oven never made it to 375. But it was delicious once it came out! :)

Garbanzo Lentil Soup
This is a version of this soup and this soup, made on the stove (instead of the crock pot) and with orange sweet potatoes and white/yellow yams. I love this soup.

Ingredients
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
6-8 tiny sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 large white/yellow yam, peeled and chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp ground ginger
3/4 tsp tumeric
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 cup dried green lentils, picked over
1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes, with juice
2 1/2 - 3 cups cooked organic garbanzos (with liquid)
6 cups warm or hot water
2 low-salt vegan bouillon squares

What To Do
Heat the oil in the soup pot while chopping the onion. Saute the onion for 5-10 minutes, letting it brown a little. Chop the garlic, and add it for one - two minutes. Then, add a bit of water to de-glaze the pan (get all the good brown stuff off the pan). Let this simmer while you put all the other ingredients in the soup pot.
Add the water and bouillon. Add the cooked garbanzos, chopped sweet potatoes and yam, and green lentils. Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamon. Stir everything well.
Cook and cook over medium-high heat; let everything come to a boil. Reduce the heat, and let the soup cook for 45-60 minutes, stirring every so often.
Serve warm with slices of bread (you can use the bread I made or any other bread). It's also good with rice or couscous.

Happy New Year!

Sweet Potato Squash & Garbanzo Soup with Kasha

Yesterday's dinner was a hearty, thick stew. I made the soup separate from the kasha, and served them together, making a thick, stick-to-your-ribs stew that was quite filling. I had forgotten how much I liked kasha. You could always cook the kasha with the soup, but I liked the separateness of the two. I think it led to the vibrant colors: This soup was very brightly colored -- yellow and orange vegetables in deep yellow broth, bright greens, red kasha.

Ingredients
Soup:
2 sweet potatoes, scrubbed and cubed (from the farmers' market)
1 sweet yellow onion, chopped (from MOM's)
1/2 head of garlic, minced (from the farmers' market)
1 long delicata squash, cut in half, seeds scooped out, and chopped (ditto)
1 large gold potato, scrubbed and cubed (not Yukon, I can't remember the variety that we picked at the market on Saturday)
1 head of greens, thinly sliced (from Kira's farm stand. She said to use it like spinach, so I did)
1 cup vegetable broth
1 T extra virgin olive oil
3 cups water
1 cup garbanzos + 1 cup garbanzo cooking liquid
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning

Kasha:
1 cup dried kasha
2 cups water
1/4 tsp sea salt

What to do
For the soup:
As you cut the sweet potatoes and potatoes, put them in a large soup pot with the water and vegetable broth.
Add the garlic and onions as you cut them.
Add the garbanzos and cooking water, the olive oil, and the herbs. (Because I knew that I was going to use some salt in the kasha, I didn't put any in the soup. You might want to put some in the soup.)
Cook, covered, over medium heat until the vegetables are soft and the broth is a lovely deep yellow.
When the vegetables are soft enough for you, turn off the heat and add the greens. Cover the pot again and let the soup cook the greens for you.
Keep the pot covered until you are ready to serve.

For the kasha:
Rinse the kasha well and remove any blackened grains. Place in pot with 2 cups of water and seal salt. Stir, cook until all the water is absorbed. I did this right before serving, so that the kasha was warm.

To serve:
Place some kasha in a bowl, then ladle soup on top. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast. You can serve it like that or mix the kasha into the soup, making it a stew.
Enjoy!

Red Beet and Lentil Soup

Last night I made a very RED soup for dinner for me and the girls. I used yellow and orange carrots, red onion, red beets, and purple-skinned potatoes from the farmers' market, red lentils from bulk (Fairway or MOM's), yellow lentils from my mom (she gifted me with these two really cool lentil packages -- yellow and beluga -- last time I visited), and left-over brown rice for the soup. The girls both ate it for dinner and I had two bowls (one with rice and one without). It was so nice to get to cook again. And use up some of the lovely produce that's been living in my fridge, neglected, while I work away the days.

Ingredients
10 cups hot water
1 cup red (orange) lentils
1 cup yellow lentils (or another cup of red lentils)
1 orange carrot (peel left on)
1 yellow carrot (peel left on)
1 red (purple) onion
2 red beets, peeled
3 purple-skinned potatoes (peel left on)
1 tsp dried minced garlic
1 tsp dried dill
1 cup cooked brown rice

What to do
This soup was souper easy.
In the food processor, chop up the onion and carrots together.
Dice the potatoes and beets on a cutting board.
Then, in one pot, add: water, lentils, potatoes, beets, carrots, onion, garlic, and dill.
Cook until the vegetables are soft and the lentils have fallen apart.
Puree the soup.
Stir in the brown rice and serve!

Moroccan Garbanzo and Lentil Soup

I love garbanzo beans. ♥ Love love love. ♥ And lentils. ♥ Love love love. ♥

Jacqui loves sweet potatoes. She asks for them all the time, and tells me that she ♥ LOVES ♥ sweet potatoes.

So it was no surprise that this morning, when I asked her what she wanted in today's soup, that she asked for sweet potatoes. She choose sweet potatoes over white potatoes, yellow potatoes, green peppers, and green beans -- all vegetables she truly enjoys.

This soup is a sweet potato version of a soup I made back in April. The recipe is a mix up of several recipes -- one from my mom and sister and a few lentil and garbanzo bean soup recipes that I've found over the years. I used ground ginger this morning because I didn't have any fresh ginger in the apartment.

Ingredients
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1 large sweet potato, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 cup dried lentils, picked over
1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes, with juice
2 1/2 - 3 cups cooked organic garbanzos
6 cups warm or hot water
2 low-salt vegan bouillon squares

What To Do
Heat the oil while chopping the onion. Saute the onion for 5-10 minutes, letting it brown a little. Chop the garlic, and add it for one - two minutes. Then, add a bit of water to de-glaze the pan (get all the good brown stuff off the pan). Let this simmer while you put all the other ingredients in the soup pot.
Jacqui unwrapped the bouillon and put the 2 cubes into the pot, then helped me put in the 6 cups of water. Jacqui and Adrianna then helped me add the cooked garbanzos (cooked last night with 2 bay leaves), chopped sweet potatoes, and green lentils.
Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamon. Add the onion, garlic, and whatever water is still there with them. Stir everything well.
Place over medium-high heat and let everything come to a boil. Reduce the heat, and let the soup cook for 45-60 minutes, stirring every so often.

Beans and Tomatoes Soup (what else?)

After a week of not being home much because I was working until 2am almost every night, I made soup on Sunday night/Monday morning for the girls. Dave had admonished me to leave him with food that they would eat, nothing new. (I left beets for them last week. Jacqui loves beets and ate hers. Adrianna was trying them for the first time. She threw them across the kitchen. Hence the admonition.)

We got home from MD at 2:30 in the morning. After unloading the car and getting the girls back to bed, I made this soup up. Finished it in the morning as I left for work. The girls ate it for lunch and dinner yesterday. Jacqui really liked it and was excited to tell me that she ate it for lunch and dinner. Adrianna ate it; she's not much for talking, so I'm not sure how much she liked it. But she ate it and didn't throw it across the kitchen, so score one for SOUP!

Slow cooker, I love you.

Ingredients
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 sweet, yellow onion, diced
1 1/2 - 2 cups of cooked garbanzos (I used cooked because I had them in the fridge, but you could also use one 15 oz can, drained)
1 can organic diced tomatoes with juices
2 cans of water, plus extra if needed
1 vegan low-salt bouillon square
1 cup sliced zucchini
black pepper and sea salt to taste
1 tsp dried thyme
2 bay leaves
two handfuls green lentils (~1/2 cup)
2 handfuls brown Jasmine rice (~1/2 cup)

What to do
At night, plug in and heat up the slow cooker while you are dicing the onion. Put the olive oil in and let it warm up. Add the onion, and let it cook for a few minutes before adding the other ingredients.
Add the garbanzos, tomatoes, water, bouillon square, zucchini, pepper, salt, thyme, and bay leaves. Cook on low.
In the morning (5-6 hours), add the lentils and rice. Season with salt and/or pepper as needed.
At lunchtime, enjoy the hot soup!

Vegan Lentil Soups

I made these two soups last week. Both were big hits with the girls -- and with me! Both are lentil-based soups, made in the slow cooker. Perfect for days when you need a home-cooked meal, but just don't have the time (or won't be home) to make it when you want/need to eat.

Lentil Soup with Kale Ribbons
Ingredients
olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 large yellow carrots, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 cups dried green lentils, picked over and rinsed
6 cups warm or hot water
3 low-salt vegan boullion squares
1 T Bragg's sauce
remains of a bunch of kale, stemmed

What To Do
Before going to work on Sunday afternoon, heat a saute pan over medium heat. When warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the chopped onion, celery, and carrots. Saute unil soft, adding water if needed, approximately 8-10 minutes.
Add the water and vegetable boullion to the slow cooker, mix to break up/in the boullion. Add the sauteed veggies to slow cooker. Add the lentils and Bragg's. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.
Meanwhile, roll the kale and cut thin strips. Boil a salted pot of water, add the kale when it is boiling, and cook the kale for 5-6 minutes. Drain in a colander.
Leave the kale next to the slow cooker for Dave to mix into the soup before feeding it to the girls for dinner.

This soup was a big hit with both Jacqui and Adrianna. Woo hoo! :)

Lentil and Garbanzo Soup
Ingredients
olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 yellow carrots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp groun cumin
1/4 tsp ground cardamon
1 cup dried lentils, picked over and rinsed
1/2 large can of diced tomatoes, without juice (save other half to make soup again)
1 can organic garbanzos, drained and rinsed
6 cups warm or hot water
3 low-salt vegan boullion sqaures

What To Do
When I get home late Sunday night from work, and know that I won't be getting a meal tomorrow unless I make it tonight...heat a saute pan over medium heat. When warm, add the olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the chopped onion, garlic, and carrots. Cover and cook unil soft, adding water if needed. Add the ginger, tumeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamon, stirring to coat the veggies. Add water if it gets too gummy.
Add the water and vegetable boullion to the slow cooker, mix to break up/in the boullion. Add the coated veggies to slow cooker. Add the lentils, garbanzos, and tomatoes. Cook on low overnight (for 6-8 hours).
Place the slow cooker to warm in the morning, spoon soup into a to-go thermos, and enjoy a piping hot container of soup at lunchtime on the go!

I meant to make couscous to serve with this soup, but didn't have the time to get it made Monday morning before I dashed out of the apartment at 7 am. So it was couscous-less the first day. It should be served with couscous or brown rice, or any other whole grain. Jacqui and Adrianna loved this soup too. Yay!

Fassolatha (Greek Bean Soup)

On Sunday I made Fassolatha soup, after seeing the posting on Disposable Aardvarks about the Greek lunch she made for her oldest. (Can I say that I am totally jealous of her culinary and bento-making skills?)

I used the same recipe from About.com as a base. I changed a few things though...

To make this a soup that my kids and I could enjoy, I omitted the hot peppers, added some more carrots and celery, and used the 3 T of tomato paste. I used up the rest of my organic olive oil in the soup (1 cup!). The soup took an hour and a half to cook, during which time Jacqui and I watched and stirred it, and I tried to teach her how to say Fa-sou-la-tha.

On Sunday, we enjoyed the soup with breaed (not crusty, just Vermont Breads from the grocery store) and extra salt and pepper. Dave and I had it for a late lunch (at 5 pm) and Jacqui snacked on it with us and ate it for dinner. Adrianna even got in on the fun at dinner time and was eating up the beans like crazy. She wasn't a big fan of the potatoes, which I think I cut too big anyway. She did eat a few pieces of the carrot.

Yesterday, Jacqui had the soup for lunch with brown rice mixed in -- her idea -- I served it on the side and she added it right in. I tried the soup with the brown rice and liked it too! Adrianna didn't seem to like the rice in the soup. She still ate the beans, but mostly just played with the rice portion of it. I could get her to eat the rice with the beans if the spoon held 2-3 beans and 2-3 grains of rice. Otherwise, it was straight in and out of the mouth, just like the potato pieces!

Dinner last night for Jacqui was brown rice, green beans, tofu pup, strawberries. Jacqui was disappointed that we didn't have soup too. I can't remember the last time she's asked for the same meal three times in a row!

Next time I make this soup (and there will be a next time), in addition to adding extra salt and pepper (and maybe trying a hot pepper), I will also add in rice. The soup was delish with the rice soaking up the broth, and it became a full meal without having to scrounge around for some bread. Yum!

End of December Cooking and Baking

Our camera is lost or was stolen. And I had a lot of work to get done before Christmas. Those are my excuses for having nothing posted since December 15.

Here's what I was up to...

Curried Lentils and Cauliflower with Brown Rice
--I was afraid of overspicing these (for Jacqui) and didn't use enough curry powder. Next time -- more!

Tunisian Tomato and Lentil Soup
--Delicious! Not too spicy, and with some brown rice or other whole grain, very filling.

Grammie's Brownies
--this recipe is just too big to make for me! I ate too many and gave the rest away to friends. I also used apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar, which gave the brownies a bit of a tangy kick.

Steamed beets, turnips, Brussels sprouts, and carrots with brown rice and walnuts
--this dinner needed a sauce. The beets were delish (Jacqui ate them all!), but steamed veggies are, as Dave says, blah without something else.

Pea and Barley Soup
--used my mom's pea soup recipe, but added barley and changed the spices around a bit. A big hit with Jacqui and Dave. Jacqui will be eating this for meals this week (back to work!).

Cheezy Pasta and Mushrooms
--made a few changes to my cheezy sauce; Dave liked it a lot more. I used some more brown rice miso (I think that's what changed the flavor for him), and replaced the cornstarch with kuzu powder (2 tsp), used 3/4 tsp salt and 3/4 tsp garlic, and used roasted sunflower seeds. The sauce makes A LOT -- 6 cups. I used 3 1/2 cups of it with the pasta (1 and 1/2 packages of spirals) and topped it all with mushrooms (black Chinese ones and miataki) sauteed with Earth Balance, olive oil, and two minced cloves of garlic. Yummmm....

Three Roots & Beans Soup

My attempt at a cute name for la soupe du jour. :P The soup has three beans (yellow wax beans, green beans, and pink Lila beans) and three root vegetables (golden beet, Yukon gold potato, and red potatoes), along with some other yummy ingredients.

This morning was an early morning. Not because I had to get to work early (like Friday and Monday), but because the girls have gotten used to waking up early with me. We just need to adjust their other sleeping times to make up for the hour they are losing in the morning.

I asked J, as we were making breakfast sandwiches with the pumpkin biscuits, slices of Tofutti cheese (orange for J, white for me), and Yves faux Canadian bacon, what she wanted to do. She wanted to make soup! So, we made soup, in the slow cooker.

I dreamed of minestrone for some reason last night. This soup is by no means a minestrone (not sure what makes a soup a minestrone...must figure that out...), but it's a very full (and hopefully filling) soup.

Ingredients
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped (part of our Fairway haul)
1 large clove garlic, minced (EO)
1 golden beet, chopped (EO)
6 small red potatoes, chopped
1 medium Yukon gold potato, chopped (Fairway)
1 - 1/2 lbs green and yellow wax beans, ends snapped off and broken into 1 - 2 inch pieces
1 cup tiny orange/yellow tomatoes (J picked them Saturday at the market)
beet greens, washed and cut into small pieces (EO)
5 cups water
1 square not-chicken vegetable bouillon
1/2 cup pastini (stars!)
1 cup cooked Lila Rancho Gordo beans (grown by Mexican farmers participating in the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project)
Splash of apple cider vinegar

What to do
It's a slow cooker soup, so bring out the slow cooker and plug it in. Put it to hot. W hen it's a little warm, add the olive oil.
Chop the onion and garlic, and add to the warm pot and olive oil. Stir.
Chop the root vegetables and add to the pot. Stir.
Add the water and the bouillon square. Stir.
Wash, trim, and break the yellow and green beans into 1 - 2 inch pieces, and add to the pot. Stir.
Wash and add the tomatoes to the pot. Stir.
Add the Lila beans. Stir.
Take the beet greens off the stems (J helped here), wash them, and cut them up. I used kitchen sheers because I was holding A by this point and couldn't use a knife. Add the greens to the pot. Stir.
After 10-15 minutes (give the greens time to wilt), add the pastini. (Add more water if you think you need it at this point too.) Stir.
Add the splash of apple cider vinegar. Stir.
Wait until lunchtime, and serve!




Thoughts
Any bean would probably work here. I had made these beans up over the weekend and have been eating them as I need beans. They are quite good, with a depth of flavor that I'm not used to in my normal beans. That's why I paid the big bucks for them though -- the taste of RG beans is supposed to be outstanding!

The apple cider vinegar is to combat the bitterness of the greens. I know that J likes the greens (we've eaten them before), but I cook them with a splash of vinegar to take the bitter edge off. So, I added that splash to the soup. Should work.

I ate this soup for dinner. By the time I got home tonight, as you can see from the pictures, the soup was more of a stew. I think that D must have left it on high for most of the day and not turned it to low or warm after lunch. Oh well. Still delish! :)

Winter Squash and Tofu Soup

It looked like cornmeal. Yummy cornmeal. And made me really want cornbread or popped corn or anything corn. But no corn involved. I did snack on the popped pumpkin squash seeds I made while roasting the squash...

I based the soup on a recipe in Robin Robertson's One-Dish Vegetarian Meals cookbook. I roasted my long pumpkin squash on Saturday, and needed to use up some of the goodness. A can't eat it all herself!

I also had a block of soft tofu in the fridge, taking up precious space needed for our $200 haul from Fairway... I'm a little afraid of tofu, so I tend to use it blended in things, made into brownies, etc. One day I will be brave and try some of those great sounding and looking tofu recipes out there, but until that day, beans are my staple and tofu will be incorporated into my dishes.

Here's Sunday's dinner

Winter Squash and Tofu Soup
Ingredients
1 1/2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
1 huge clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped (frozen) celery
1 large carrot, chopped
1 Yukon gold potato, chopped
1 1/4-1 1/2 cup roasted pumpkin squash
5 cups water
1 block soft tofu, crumbled
2 cups frozen brown rice
1/4-1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2-1 tsp coarse sea salt
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1/2-1 tsp no-salt seasoning
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 cup (or more) nutritional yeast

What to do
Heat big LeCreuset, heat olive oil, saute onion for 5 minutes. Add garlic, saute 2-3 minutes more. (I forgot the garlic, and sauteed and added it after the soup was a soup; it still worked. :))
Add the vegetables, water, seasonings, nutritional yeast, and rice. Crumble the tofu into the pot. Cook for 30 minutes, until vegetables are soft.
When all the veggies are soft, puree the soup, with an immersion blender or by batches in a blender or food processor. (The immersion blender makes this step SUPER easy.) Taste and add more salt or nutritional yeast or no-salt seasoning, whatever you think it needs.
Enjoy!

It's a full meal in a bowl. You could serve it with fresh parsley, but I couldn't find mine. (Turns out it was still in a bag in the living room, having been forgotten the previous day! I crashed when putting the kiddies to bed after our Fairways trip, and D didn't remember that the parsley was hiding out in a bag with sweet potatoes and other non-refrigeratables.)

J and I ate our soup with extra sprinkles (aka nutritional yeast) and I added some sprinklings of coarse sea salt to mine. YUM.

Hearty Tomato, Fennel, and Kasha Soup

Saturday was a big cooking day for me. I had lots of yummy vegetables that I didn't want to go to waste, and I needed to make some good food for J for the week.

The inspiration for this soup was the fennel I bought. It's been sitting in the fridge for a week -- I didn't know what to do with it. I looked in all my cookbooks for something that sounded good -- or that even included fennel! Not much.



I decided that the fennel looked like celery, and so maybe I could use it like celery. The most interesting recipe I saw for fennel was a Mediterranean-style soup, but it required some vegetables (and beans) that I didn't have. I did have crushed tomatoes...and who doesn't love a good tomato soup on a rainy day?

Ingredients
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 cup baby carrots, chopped
1 fennel bulb + stems, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 no-chicken bouillon square
4 cups hot water
2 bay leaves
1 tsp no-salt seasoning
1 28-oz crushed tomatoes
fennel fronds, chopped
1 cup cooked garbanzos
1 1/2 cups cooked small white beans
1/2 cup uncooked kasha

What To Do
Make the "fennel mirepoix" - warm the LeCreuset over medium heat, add and warm the olive oil, then add the chopped onion, carrots, and fennel. Saute for 10 minutes. Add the chopped garlic and saute for another three minutes.
Add the bouillon square and hot water, bay leaves, seasoning, and crushed tomatoes.
Add the garbanzos and white beans. Mix well. Add the kasha. Cover and cook for 30-60 minutes.
Add the fennel fronds, and keep soup warm on low until ready to serve.

How it turned out
D and J had this soup for dinner Saturday (while I was out celebrating Sera's birthday!) and both liked it. They had some breadsticks with the soup. I ate a bowl when I came home. The fennel was still a little crunchy (I had hoped for that) and the soup had a slight licorice smell and taste. D called it a "tea-smell" -- I think my nursing tea has fennel in it and he associated the smell with my tea. It was much thicker than I thought it would be - but in a good way.

All the recipes I saw with fennel only called for the bulb. I thought that was such a waste! There are stalks and fronds to work with too!!! I used everything from my fennel in this soup. I also used up my last onion and most of my garlic, so those are getting added to the shopping list too.

Golden Orange Soup

Well, the squash coconut casserole takes on a funny smell/taste after the first day. Still tastes good, but the smell is weird. I think it's the sage. J wouldn't eat much of it today at lunch, but she did eat the chili! D said she was "nursing her orange juice the whole time" but she ate a whole bowl of chili. :)

I ate another serving of the casserole, with plenty of black pepper and salt, for dinner. Lots of pepper totally masked the "sagey" taste/smell, so maybe it just needed more salt and pepper? Something to consider for the next time. I started dinner with this salad -- fresh tomatoes (thanks to my m-i-l), clover sprouts, chopped golden yellow squash, and the remainder of my nut sauce. Nutty and yummy.

So, I can't rely on leftovers for J to eat tomorrow. I have to make something new, even though I'm supposed to be working (I'm reading cases, yes I am!). I have a meal planned for when I have some time this week, but tonight's not it. She likes my mom's pea soup, so I thought I'd make that...but I don't have any green peas. So, I'm making a golden soup for her. It's based on a recipe I found years ago (maybe 2000?) in my food co-op's newsletter (I think) and my mom's great pea soup. I had yellow split peas on hand, but no parsnips (required for the circa-2000 pea soup recipe), and didn't have the green peas (required for my mom's recipe). I like pea soups because they are easy to put together, easy to cook, and taste great! Here's my new recipe:

Golden Orange Soup serves 8 (I am ambitious!)


Ingredients
1 lb organic carrots, peeled and chopped (2 1/2 - 3 cups)
2 cups frozen chopped celery (prepped before we went to Maryland a few weeks ago)
1 lb split yellow peas, picked over
8 cups water
4 bay leaves (I grew and dried these myself!)

What To Do
Teach D how to pick over beans, peas, and lentils, looking for small stones and any weird looking beans. (Take them out!) Put peas in large LeCreuset.
Peel and chop the carrots. Take the celery out of the freezer and portion out 2 cups. Add both carrots and celery to LeCreuset.
Add 8 cups of water and stir everything together. Add the bay leaves.
Turn on to medium heat and cover. Cook for an hour or so, uncovering after 30-40 minutes. Stir as needed to keep everything cooking and keep the peas from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Also, remove foam as needed. The peas should start to fall apart after approximately an hour. (Work in kitchen and enjoy the yummy smell; remember to stir between cases.)
Take bay leaves out and puree soup with immersion blender. I missed one of the bay leaves, and ended up with little pieces of chopped bay leaves after blending.
Enjoy with salt and black pepper. :)

Thoughts
This could be made in the slow cooker too, but we still have chili in it, so it wasn't an option for me.
I have to find my mom's pea soup recipe! :) Fall and winter mean pea soup. And chili. And pea soup. I feel like my mom's recipe had another spice or something in it that added to the taste of the soup...Mom?
And I really wish I had someone to share cookies with! I can't justify making cookies because I will eat them all up...just like I do with the bags of chocolate chunks that I buy every time I find them at the KeyFood...

Cauliflower Potato Soup

update 10/14/09: I ate this soup for dinner last night with some brown rice and Daiya cheeze mixed in. So yummy! Nothing needs to be changed in the recipe at all! Woo hoo!!

I bought the cauliflower to make this soup last weekend when we discovered Fairways. It was orange-yellow and organic. I've never seen cauliflower that color before. And yes, the soup really is that color (it's not just my sad blackberry and the weird lighting in my kitchen, like most of my photos).

Ingredients
1 head organic cauliflower
2 medium organic potatoes
1 red onion
3 large cloves garlic
1 Rapunzel sea salt vegetable bouillon block
olive oil
water
soy milk
1/4 - 1/3 cup nutritional yeast


Prep: Chop the cauliflower and potatoes. (I didn't peel the potatoes, but I'm sure you could if you wanted to.) Chop the onion like I described yesterday (based on this tutorial) and mince the garlic.

Cook: Heat a heavy bottom pot; when warm, add ~2 T olive oil. When that is warm, add the onion. Saute until translucent. Then add the garlic and saute the garlic and onion until fragrant. Add the chopped cauliflower and potatoes. Add enough water to cover the veggies, but some potato/cauliflower should still be sticking out of the water level. Add the bouillon. Stir, and cover for 5 minutes or so to bring to a boil.
Once boiling, remove the cover and stir to beak up and distribute the bouillon. As the vegetables soften, add the nutritional yeast. Once the veggies are soft, if too much water remains, turn up the heat and let it boil off.
Use your handy-dandy immersion blender to blend everything together. Add the remaining soy milk (probably 1/4 cup) to the soup and stir to blend. After tasting, I added a little black pepper. Not much, just a little bit.

Thoughts: The soup was good, but I feel like next time I need to do something a little different. The recipes I looked at when creating this soup called for additional things like sweet peppers, roasted red peppers, cashews, miso, leeks... Maybe next time I will add one or more of those. But it was good as I made it. Hopefully J will like it today. (D taste-tested with me last night and approved of the soup.)

Wednesday's Soup

Update: Photo added and cooking time
No creative or descriptive title for today's concoction. Maybe I will come up with something after trying this at dinnertime. (Here's hoping I'm home for dinner!)

I found canary beans at the Key Food last night and *had* to buy them. They were this great yellow color and looked a little like butter beans. Then I googled recipes, but wasn't interested in making Peruvian stew today. Might try it another day, once I've mastered the whole seitan-making-process, as the recipes all called for various types of meat. (Last night was supposed to be my initiation into the seitan-process, but J wasn't sleeping well, waking up every few minutes, and then woke A up, so by the time they were completely asleep, it was well after 10:30 and I wasn't up for trying to make seitan any more.) Besides, I really wanted to make a potato soup.

So, in between the cleaning and the moving of our futon and the boxing up of things and the moving of other things (we are in the process of emptying our apt to prep and sell it), I got all my ingredients together in my head. I also really wanted to use my sweet potatoes because they were starting to sprout and my m-i-l always puts them in the fridge at that point, taking up valuable fridge space unnecessarily.

Unfortunately, by the time we were finished with the cleaning and moving and boxing, it was after 2am. I did remember around midnight to put one cup of the canary beans to soak.

So, this morning, I cooked the beans for approximately an hour and a half, with the kombu. After putting A down for her morning nap, I chopped the veggies and put the rest of the soup together before I left for work.

(photo taken with my blackberry, so it's a little grainy)

Ingredients
1 cup dried canary beans, picked through, soaked overnight
1 small piece kombu
1 large white onion, roughly chopped
olive oil
1 large yukon gold potato, roughly chopped
2 medium sweet potatoes or yams, roughly chopped
1 1/2 or 2 cups vitamin greens, chopped in food processor and frozen months ago
1 can coconut milk + 1/2 can water
2 handfuls of unroasted, unsalted, organic peanuts

What I did
I soaked the canary beans overnight. I was a bit disappointed this morning to see that the soaking took away their yellow color and made them really just look like butter beans.
I cooked the beans with the kombu while I made french toast for me and J.
I chopped the onion and sauteed it in olive oil in my big Le Creuset while I cut up the potato and sweet potatoes . I added the chopped potatoes to the Le Creuset.
Then I added the beans and cooking water, the can of coconut milk, and 1/2 can of water (to get all the coconut goodness into the pot).
I then added the vitamin greens (from my favoriate organic farm at the Farmer's Market; she says they are a Japanese green and the name translated into english is literally vitamin greens), which I had chopped in the food processor when I got them in June and froze for use in soups. :)
Finally, I added two handfuls of peanuts from my peanut stash.
I couldn't decide on a spice to add to the soup, so I left it alone. Told D to check the soup and add water if needed to keep the veggies cooking. I also told him to check at lunchtime to make sure the potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans were all cooked before serving it, and left the soup covered on 4 on my simmer burner.

At work, I decided that saffron would work well with everything, so I called and asked D to add a few threads. We'll see if he did later, and we'll see how this soup tastes, later.
My serving suggestion: two scoops of brown rice (which we have from Monday) and soup.

Update 9/24/09: I had the soup - well, really a stew, for lunch today with brown rice. (The photo is from my lunch.) It was VERY filling and tasted pretty good. The only thing about the taste: someone left the stew on until 8-something last night, and it burnt a little, so the stew had a slight burnt taste. Lesson learned -- next time, give D or his parents a specific time to turn the soup/stew off to avoid burning. I think that a little lime might go really well with this dish. Next time...

Early Morning Stew

This morning, I put a stew together for my family to eat. We'll see (and taste) the results tonight when I get home.

Here's what I did:

Put the garbanzos to soak when I left for work on Wednesday, so they would be soaked by the time I got home that night. Stayed late at work, so by the time I got home, the beans had soaked up all the water and no one had added more. Added more water and let the beans soak another hour. Added one large piece of kombu to the beans, added water, and began cooking beans while I took a shower. Scooped off the foam. Again. And again. Let the beans cook until 12:45 last night/this morning, when I decided they had cooked enough and I wanted to go to bed, as I had to be at work really early this morning. Removed kombu, drained beans, and placed cooked beans into fridge.

Woke up, brushed teeth, chopped onion and sauteed in olive oil for five minutes. Chopped three heirloom tomatoes after cutting out the bad parts (should have made this soup yesterday). Sliced and quartered medium zuchinni. Added vegetables to sauteed onion. Added three cups cooked beans and four cups water. Or was it six? Added one drained can cut green beans and two Rapunzel vegan vegetable with sea salt bouillon cubes (well, really, rectangles). Added organic oregano. Put pot on my simmer burner. Remembered that the spinach on the table was supposed to go into the soup. Chopped the spinach, added it to the coup, and left the apartment at 7:30 for work, hoping the soup cooked and someone remembered it.

Ate soup for dinner tonight. Very beany and good. J had it for lunch and I think she liked it. Off to have another bowl now. Need to eat some grain with it; think I have cooked millet in the fridge.

Sweet Potato Biscuits and Broccoli Soup

I was inspired to make dinner for me and D tonight, thinking he would be home not late. Ha. It's 10:30 and he's still not here...

Anyway, here's what I made tonight:

Sweet Potato Biscuits based on a recipe from The Vegetarian Mother

Vegan Dad's Hearty Broccoli Soup

I didn't follow the directions well on the soup, but it still turned out great. I used four heads of broccoli instead of two, and I think I used too much water. Next time I will use a little less to make the soup a little thicker. Soup: approx 4 servings, 225 cal/serving, 12.7 g protein, and 237% dv of Vitamin C!



The sweet potato biscuits are scrumptious with the soup. I used a large sweet potato instead of the medium one called for in the recipe because I *love* sweet potato! About 160 calories each, with a little more than 3 g protein each, and 92% of your daily value of vitamin A!