Carrot Soup

Part of my plans for this MoFo include making some freezer foods for when I have Lip and won't want to do / be able to do anything other than sit around in my underwear because, let's face it, the first few weeks of newborn having are kind of less than glamorous.

I had a Carnival squash sitting around not doing much of anything. I get really excited when it's squash season and buy them with no plans at all for them.

Then I decided I wanted carrot soup. Squash goes with carrots, right? So I threw that squash in the oven in the afternoon (cut in half & scooped, inch of water in the pan, 400 degrees, 45 minutes or so). Then the entire adventure of my day was braving the grocery store on student discount day, which is the worst, because many of them have never learned the amazing life skill of grocery shopping and have zero shopping etiquette, plus there's a million of them.

So I didn't follow any particular recipe; I'm sure that there's all kinds of various recipes floating around in my head because I've made lots of carrot and / or squash soups in my life.

Soup

1 carnival squash
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and chopped or however you like to prep ginger
2 tsp masala
2 tsp hot curry paste
1.5  - 2 lb carrots, chopped
4 c veg broth
1 can coconut milk (I used lite)

Cook your squash however you like to cook squash. I suppose that if you want to peel it raw and chop it into chunks and toss it in the soup and cook it a bit longer you could do that too. Put your soup pot over medium heat and put in the oil. Saute the onions with a sprinkling of salt until softened and translucent; toss in the garlic and ginger, cooking until fragrant. Add the two curries and cook for a minute or two. Add the squash, carrots and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes or until carrot is tender, stirring occasionally. When everything is cooked, turn off the heat and add the coconut milk.

If you want to pull out your blender, you can blend and nom; just make sure to let the steam escape. I used my immersible hand blender because it's awesome and convenient.

The only problem with this soup is that we ate the majority of it for dinner instead of freezing any, so I'm going to have to make some again soon to toss in the freezer.

Meal Planning Monday - Week 6

Back on the wagon!

Delicious looking Garlic Roasted Chickpeas, quinoa, garlic sauteed spinach
Roasted Red Pepper and Goat Cheese Penne, caesar salad
Jerk tofu, ginger mashed sweet potatoes, bbq'd zucchini, beet salad
Lentil sloppy joes, mashed potatoes, carrots, green salad
Black bean chipotle soup, bruschetta, kale salad

Meal Planning Monday: Week 3

We totally crapped out on the meal planning thing over the weekend, unfortunately. I feel sufficiently guilty about it to say that I am confident we will not crap out this week.

This week will feature

Jerk tofu, mashed cauliflower, grilled zucchini with cherry tomatoes & cheese

TLT sandwiches and fava bean soup

AfR Mango BBQ Baked Beans, steamed broccoli, rice

PPK Cabbage and Rice Soup, green salad

Grilled portobellos, lemon roast potato packet, green beans, greek salad

Saturday is the wedding for which I am doing 150 vegan cupcakes, so this week's meal plan doesn't feature anything super exciting; I wanted to stick with things that are easy and fast.

Meal Planning Monday: Week 2

Well that whole thing went swimmingly for me last week, so I think we'll do this again!

I can't really get posts out in a timely fashion but I did get Ian to take pictures of many of the foodstuffs that emerged from the kitchen last week; not that I want to do a daily post about them but I like to share delicious food always. However, objective 'eat out less' was achieved, as was, for the most part, objective 'eat all the food that gets purchased.'The notable exceptions were that I never ended up feeling like eating kale salad, but thankfully kale holds over pretty well; and the macaroni and cheese recipe made WAY TOO MUCH. I might cut it in half next time. We still have about half a casserole left of it, but it's late enough now that I'm going to have to chuck it.

This week's meals

Stuffed portobellos, mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, steamed carrots
Ricotta gnocchi & caesar salad
Lemon roast potatoes on the BBQ, grilled zucchini, leftover 'slaw
Roasted mushroom & white bean soup, green salad, garlic bread
White bean & kalamata salad, roasted cauliflower, green beans
Penne with roasted asparagus & balsamic glaze, kale salad

Wood ear mushrooms!

Exotic ingredient spotted: dried wood ear mushrooms at Whole Foods! Something twigged in my mind when I saw them and I couldn't quite remember what it was, so naturally I bought them and took them home and leafed through Veganomicon. Sure enough, there's a recipe for a hot n sour soup with wood ear mushroom and napa cabbage.

I haven't had hot n sour soup since going veg almost two years ago, so this was a particularly fortuitous find. I didn't know how much to buy - they're ridiculously light! - so it turns out I have enough left to make another pot.

Anyway, the soup is amazing even if not exactly what I remember. I think it was just a consistency thing - this soup isn't the super thick almost gelatin-y soup I had come to expect. The flavour was perfect though and the chewiness of the wood ears was divine.

Something I rarely do: use the white bowls. Thought the colour of the soup should be shown!

Lentil Soup

In a short time I made two lentil soups. The first was the Sniffle Soup from ED&BV, which we enjoyed. The most recent was Arabian Lentil and Rice Soup from AfR. Verdict? We love lentil soups!

The soup was easy to throw together and of course yummy. I don't know anything about Lebanese or Arabian cooking, so I trust that the cumin and coriander made it authentic tasting. However, once again AfR proves itself to be one of the most valuable books in my collection. Also, we eat a lot of soup.

Fall = Soup

The weather the last few days (weeks?) has been spectacularly crummy. I like Autumn, but this business of raining constantly is just getting on my nerves. The one upside in this is that it's soup weather. In the Service (of Guelph) residence, it's always soup season, because we don't like to discriminate. But summer soups are lighter and brothier, for the most part, than the creamy, heavy, blended soups we consume so much in the fall / winter months.

I've had this soup out of ED&BV on my list for quite some time now. Fortunately, it's one of those soups that you probably always have the ingredients for on hand, so even though it wasn't in my meal plan this week, I had forgotten that the kid was going to spend the day with his grandparents on Wednesday and that it would be nice to send him with some food - as well as have some to take to work for lunch for myself! Whipped this up at 9pm the night before and tomorrow will be day 3 of lunch from it, so roughly 6 servings. Perfect.

Sniffle Soup

Now, the description says that it was originally made for Dreena's daughter, who had a cold. I would probably up the curry ante by about a tablespoon if I really wanted this to be a good sinus clearing soup, but as is, it's quite tasty and definitely super hearty. One thing I really like about most of the things I've cooked out of ED&BV (this is no exception) is that they're naturally low fat even though it doesn't profess to be a low fat book. This soup is no exception; you can cook the onions in as little or as much oil as you want, and there's no added milk of any kind to make this creamy, since the lentils make it that thick consistency all by their lonesome.

If you have the book and haven't tried this recipe yet, go for it; it's perfect for this time of year.