Moosewood Vegetable Soup with Extra Mushrooms and Alphabets

Mmm Moosewood.  Mollie Katzen's Classic cookbooks are all well worn around these parts.  I've mentioned them here before, but somehow forgot to share our favourite soup during last year's soup swap recipe posts.  

The Moosewood Vegetable Soup from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest
 and it's many variations are a regular part of our fall meals around here.  There's a big pot of it boiling on the stove right now for our dinner so there's no time like the present to share this classic.


As the title suggests, this is a basic vegetable soup recipe with  bunch of great suggestions on how to mix it up.  This is our favourite way to make it, with a gazillion mushrooms and a rainbow of carrots, but it changes seasonally.

Boil together until the potatoes are just tender:


4 cups vegetable stock
1 large potato sliced thinly
a dash of sea salt




Next you'll need


2 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 large white or yellow onion chopped
1 large clove of garlic crushed
1 teaspoon of salt
4 carrots, we use a mix of orange and purple carrots
a handful of button mushrooms
a bunch of enoki mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon each; thyme, savoury, marjoram, basil
freshly ground pepper to taste

Heat a heavy skillet, add butter, olive oil, onions, garlic and salt and sauté on medium heat for 5 minutes or until onions clear. Add the remaining finely sliced vegetables and herbs.  Continue stirring for 8-10 minutes.  Add the skillet full to your pot of stock and potatoes. Simmer for another 20-30 minutes.

Before serving we add little italian soup noodles, especially the alphabet ones.  This is how my mother made it and now how we make it for our family. 
You need to cook the noodles separately or else its a big mess.  So cook one cup of soup noodles until al dente. Drain, rinse and put them in the bowls.  Serve the soup on top of the noodles, mix gentle and enjoy.

We're sending some over to a some friends with new babies, so we send the noodles separately with the instructions written on the lid of the jar.
Now I'm off to eat some.  I can't wait for a reasonable dinner hour.

Cubit’s Organics’ Roasted Carrots and Beets with Mint and Feta

{ this post was originally published over on Sadie Designs. Sarah's blog is a delicious place and I'm sure you'll see why we wanted to work together. }

The combination of sandy soil and full sun means that we are able to grow really nice root vegetables in our front yard here in Toronto.  When we’re not growing for seed, we just grow all the different types and colours mixed up so what you pick is a surprise; A striped beet or a purple carrot? Who knows.

Our two year old daughter has taken to announcing that she needs a carrot and then heads to the front door to go get one from the garden.  I can’t help but oblige and let her pick a few whether I was planning on having them for dinner or not.

This is really so easy that it hardly qualifies as a recipe but it’s simply too delicious to keep to myself.  We bringing carrots to my mother’s every year for Thanksgiving dinner and will continue the tradition this Sunday.

1. Send the two year old out into the yard to pick some different coloured carrots and beets.  Going to the farmers market to get some heirloom root veggies will also suffice.

2. Preheat your oven to 425.

Wash your carrots and beets.  I cut the greens off but leave a little at the top just because I think it looks good.  I cut the really long tails off the beets  because they will burn otherwise and then cut them all in half length wise.

3. Coat everything in olive oil, add a little salt.  Then roast them in the oven at 425 for 40 minutes.

4. Let everything cool down for a few minutes, then crumble feta on to your veggies and add a hardy handful of mint leaves.   Toss and serve out of your favorite vintage bowl.  I think they look nice in this plaid one.

These are tasty when hot but are also great as a room temperature salad so no hurry to get everything done at the right time. 

5. Give thanks for the vegetable gardens and the small children that tend to them.

project365: week thirty seven September 17th, 2011 - September 23rd, 2011

Whoa! Week 37 of project 365 and the blog has been going strong for a whole year.  Thanks everyone!

September 17th, 2011 Self Portrait while Apple Picking!

 September 18th, 2011 Golden Swiss Chard at the farm.

 September 19th, 2011 Back in the city enjoying a drink in a bar.

 September 20th, 2011 Spent my birthday taking pictures of apples and pears.

 September 21st, 2011 Hydrangeas from the garden dried for Becca's bedroom.

 September 22nd, 2011 Beans from the garden for dinner.

September 23rd, 2011 Beets, carrots and mint from the garden for dinner.

Soup Swap Recipe: Poppy's Curried Carrot & Apple Soup

So many good soups!  I am actually eating this one as I type this great veggie soup recipe out for you.
Rebecca too, but her's has some brown rice baby cereal mixed into it to make it easier to eat.

Poppy's Curried Carrot & Apple Soup

2 tsp sunflower oil
1tbsp curry powder
11/4lb (500g) chopped carrots
1 large chopped onion
1 large chopped apple
4 cups (1L) vegetable stock
salt & pepper
chopped parsley

Heat oil in a large, heavy pan and gently fry curry powder for 2-3 minutes.

Add chopped carrots, onion, and apple.  Stir until well coated with the curry powder, then cover the pan.

Cook over low heat for 15-20 minutes, until softened.

Spoon the vegetables into food processor or blender.  Add half the stock and blend until smooth.

Return to pan and pour in remaining stock.  Bring soup to a boil and adjust seasoning to taste.  Garnish with parsley.

So Delicious!

Something wonderful came in the mail: A felt carrot

Rebecca has recently really started playing with her little wooden stove, she especially likes it when a cat hangs out inside the oven.  

So for Christmas we have started collecting some nice felt food from etsy to go with the stove.  I'm thinking about building her a little sink too.  This week a lovely carrot from ettarose showed up.  Hand stitched and made of wool felt, its truly eco-friendly and also very cute. I cannot wait to give it to her as carrots are her absolute favourite.

Etta was also kind enough to send us a felt barrette and it seems we have just enough hair to use it.  She loves it.  I think I'm going to combine the two and order a felt carrot barrette for her next.  Poor baby, when your mother is a vegetable gardener, you have to wear carrots in your hair.

Wordless Wednesday: Gratuitous Carrot Photography/Pornography

In celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving we harvested and shared the last of our carrots from the garden with my family. My soil is mainly sand, which may be terrible for tomatoes but it certainly makes good carrots. This year we had great luck growing a rainbow of carrots; white, yellow, red, orange and purple.  Rebecca really likes watching me pull them out of the ground but is afraid to do it herself.


Regarding the title, please see this great post regarding garden porn from you grow girl, circa 2003. Safe for work, I promise.  

Recipe: Autumn Soup

This is a staple at our house once the weather starts to get colder and the vegetables from the garden start to take over the house.  Currently we are overrun with carrots and squash so it must be time for soup.

First things first we need to make the stock.  I like to have some made ahead but lately I’m just not that organized.  We avoid store bought stock for a few reasons; BPA in cans, high levels of sodium especially for the baby, and all vegetable stock seems to have soy, which we just can’t have.  Stock is so easy to make that there’s really no need for the prepared stuff anyway.

Soup stock:

Fill a big pot ¾ full of cold tap water

Add 1 carrot cut lengthwise

4 stocks of celery, the more leaves the better*

2 peeled onions

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of peppercorns

2 bay leaves

Let the water reach a boil then turn down to a simmer for about an hour.  Once everything is soft and the stock has a nice colour, strain out veggies.

*We like to use organic celery.  It tastes better and it’s the number one food on the dirty dozen; the EWG’s list of foods with the highest levels of pesticides and therefore the most important foods to buy organic.

If I haven’t prepared the stock ahead of time I start roasting the veggies as the stock simmers.  They will be finished at about the same time.

Roast your veggies on the barbeque:

Roast together with a pinch of salt and a liberal amount of olive oil:

A handful of orange carrots

A handful of yellow carrots

2 red onions

A handful of tomatoes

1 zucchini

Squash.

Normally I would use one squash, but this time I used 3; 2 Waltham Butternut and 1 Royal Acorn. We officially have too many squash.  I normally would never use this much, but we need to use them up and we have a lot of people to feed this weekend.

Sprinkle each half with brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt.

Put 1 clove of garlic in each cavity.

Drizzle with olive oil.

Grill veggies at 400° for 45 minutes and squash for 1 hour.

Make the soup:

Scoop out the squash into your pot of stock.  Add your veggies.   Add a chopped up potato for each person. Bring back to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. 

Blend the soup:

An immersion blender would work best, but since I don’t have one I whizz it up in the food processor in a few batches.  Generally we continue to cook it for at least 20 minutes, or until its time to eat, once the soup has been blended.

Eat! 

Garnish with a nasturtium or some chives and serve with a nice piece of bread (like Ace Bakery’s Rosemary Focaccia) with too much butter.