Saturday Soup

As per usual I only seem to want to cook when I have a lack of food in the house, or my food is going bad. So today I made some Lentil soup. A colleague at work mentioned it to me a while back, so a while back I bought a tin of lentils. Seeing as how the only fresh vegetable in my fridge was an onion, it was time to go to the tins.

Curry Lentil Soup:


Ingredients:
1 can lentils
chicken stock
1 onion (diced)
curry powder
Carrot (I didn't have any on hand)

In pot, add a bit of oil, and curry powder, cook powder a little then add diced onions. Cook onions until they start to brown. Add lentils (I guess you could drain them but I just dumped it all in). Add stock. Simmer for 15min

So apparently lentils are pretty good for you, they are high in protien and other nutrients. It turned out pretty tasty although a bit of carrot would have been nice to round out the flavour and add a little variety.

That about sums it up, hopefully my next post will be a little more exciting.

Until then,

Liquid Diet

Hello!

I have been MIA in the blog-o-sphere for a while. I got a nasty bug over reading week and had no voice! In my opinion it is the worst week to get sick, but at least I didn't have to teach like that.

This was just the perfect excuse to make soup! I wanted something easy on the throat but also have some nutrition hidden in there somewhere (queue dirty jokes).

Broccoli, Potato, Leek, Chickpea Soup

Ingredients:

- 2 leeks

- 2 bushles of broccoli

- 1 can of chick peas

- 2 large potatoes

- 1 Tbsp olive oil

- 8 cups soup broth

-season to taste with Cayenne pepper

Directions:

- In a pot saute leeks in olive oil until tender

- add cubed potatoes and cook for 5 minutes

- cover with soup broth and boil until potatoes are cooked (~30 min)

- add broccoli and chick peas and boil for 5 minutes

- use immersion blender to puree the soup until there are no chunks left.

Sauteed leeks with potatoes added

Everything in the pot before the immersion blender made an appearance.

(I couldn't wait for the steam to calm down hence the poor quality picture)

The finished product.

Please note this was a huge batch of soup, you might want to adjust according to your needs.

What is your favourite sick food? I really like Liptons chicken noodle, but I am pretty sure it is just a huge pile of salt.

Sore Throat Saviour

Hello,

Sorry I have been MIA for a while I went to Calgary last weekend for a house warming party. There was loads of wonderful food and I ate until I couldn't move. Right went I was seteling into an awesome food coma the Kinect was brought out for some dance competitions. BLEH, it was fun though I think the Kinect has some major awesome factors since there are no controllers involved!

Thursday morning I woke up with a killer sore throat, it felt like someone had stabed my right tonsil and then poured 95% EtOH down there to desiccate the shit out of it. I wanted some nice broth-y soup to save the day.

This recipe is stolen for Devin's mom. It was reverse engineered from a soup they had in Mexico. I like to call it spicy limey deliciousness, it helps clear the sinuses like woah.

Ingredients:

-2 Tbs of olive oil

-1 onion

-1 jalepeno pepper

-3 red hot chili peppers

-1 lime

-2 tomatoes

-6 cups of vegetable and or chicken stock

Directions:

Mince and sauté onion in olive oil until translucent. Add minced jelapeno pepper (with or without seeds depending on how hot you would like it). This time I blended the lime and tomatoes because I didn't want a chunky soup but normally you would add the chopped tomatoes and the lime juice & zest. Nowadd the soup broth and minced chili peppers let simmer for 10-20 minutes to incorporate the flavours.

Note #1: Chicken can be added for a meaty-er soup

Note #2: last time we made this is was much lime-y-er andI think this was due to the fact that the tomatoes were blended this time...

Note #3: do not add the lime rind as it will make the soup very bitter

Note #5: If you don't like spice leave out the hot chili peppers

Prep the ingredients

Sauté the onions and add jalepeno

Add the broth and all of the other fixens. Simmmerrrr and eat!

This weekend there will be Chili!! There is a Departmental chili cook off on Monday and I think I am the only vegetarian chili entered. AND hopefully some white kidney bean cookies will make an appearance too. BEANS!!!

-K

Slack week

Blog post have been very infrequent this week. I haven't done much in the kitchen since Monday! Tuesday Devin made some tortilla soup for din din.

Turns out I left my camera cord at school because I am a moron, so I will add pictures later.

My lunch for the week was pasta with "cheese" sauce and made it in my new blender! I got this recipe from another blog called Edible Perspective, she has lots of fun breakfast recipes too.

I liked the "cheese" sauce a lot, it was really thick though so nice time I might add more milk. That being said, I think in it's thick form it would make a really good dip with a hummus like texture... I think that is how I will finish it off this weekend!

Devin's soup creation was really healthy and also done in the blender.

Tortilla soup:

-3 cups of soup broth of choice

-1 tomato

-1 carrot

-1 celery stalk

-1 slice of onion

-1 clove of garlic

-1 slice of red bell pepper

-1 tsp taco seasoning

-1 tsp cayenne

-1/4 jar of black bean salsa

So I did this in my blender, to do this on the stove should work with an immersion blender or by food processing the veggies first.

So I added all of the ingredients (except the salsa) in the blender and blended until smooth and then added the salsa for some texture, I also put some wraps in the oven on 350 until crispy and sprinkled it into the soup.

Today I went to Costco and stocked up on nuts and veggies. I also picked up some farro, I have never used it but I thought it would be something fun to experiment with.

So that's that! I will add pictures on Monday probably so stay tuned!

-Kirsten

My Pot has a Leek in it

So promised in my last post i have a leek adventure for you. So a bit of back story my grandfather is welsh, welsh people eat leeks. So i decided to embrace my welsh heritage and make some leek and potato soup. The leek is a noble vegetable kind of like a green onion except bigger and better.

Pot of leeks and potato

I remember back in the summer of 2009 Kirsten and i grew leeks in our garden, a year later i returned to my former house and tried to reclaim our now decently sized leeks so i could bring them to Toronto, fast forward 3 weeks and all transported leek had died due to transplant shock and lack of water.

Leek and potato soup with Fried egg sandwich

Enough about the past, so my sister came over for dinner and i made some leek and potato soup (see recipe section for recipe). To accompany this delicious soup, We had grilled cheese for my sister and due to a cheese shortage i had a fried egg sandwich. A nice thing about this soup is it is low in fat, and due to the creamy texture of the potato combined with the leek you get a nice smooth soup without the addition of cream, milk or cheese (although cheese makes everything better). It was a solid meal and to accompany it we made Chili Chocolate Tea which i had received as a Christmas gift.

Twll dîn pob Sais! iechyd da comrade.

-Brent

P.S. http://www.leekspin.com/