Sweet Potato Soup

I must be on a soup roll.... two soup blog posts in a row!

This stuff is really good.  It reminds me of Ethiopian food or even mild Indian food.  It tastes like FALL.

I nabbed the recipe from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-Potato-Carrot-Apple-and-Red-Lentil-Soup/Detail.aspx.  I followed the original pretty closely, but used less butter and regular lentils instead of red lentils.

Here's what you will need for the first step:

2 tablespoons of butter
2 sweet potatoes (pretty big ones, peeled and chopped)
1 onion  (chopped)
3 carrots (peeled and chopped)
1 large or 2 small apples (peeled and chopped)


Cook all those lovely harvest flavors together for 10 minutes on medium heat.

Sauteing the sweet potatoes, onion, apples and carrots.

 
Next you will need:

4 cups vegetables stock
1/2 cup of lentils
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
salt
pepper

Add these ingredients to the vegetables and bring to a boil for about half an hour or until veggies are tender.

Smelled soooooooooooooo good.

Transfer to food processor in small batches and liquify!

Pour back into original pot.  Add more broth, water or olive oil until you like the texture.  I added a little more broth and a few tablespoons of olive oil to mine.

DONE!

Check out the finished product:

Pesto (sorta) Tomato Soup

My favorite herb by far is basil.  If I could make it into a perfume, I would.  So when I saw that the letter "P" won the poll (yes, I am getting desperate when it comes to motivation/ideas/polls), I was excited to make PESTO!

For some reason pesto made me think of tomatoes and tomatoes made me think of tomato soup.  It is such an awesome tummy warming food for fall.  I decided to make my own recipe of pesto tomato soup.

What I did not account for was being able to make pesto in Asheboro.  The closest grocery store is a Food Lion and they only have dried basil.  So my plan was to go to an Asian market and get fresh basil, since these places usually have it for Vietnamese or Thai food.

Royall and I drove up to the biggest Asian market around and after getting over the usual "fish-smell-hitting-you-right-in-the-face" Asian store disorientation, I realized they did not have fresh basil. 

However, we did leave with octopus flavored chips (that was Royall's pick), assorted ramen noodles and dumplings, a box of crackers, and a big bag of rice.

We then decided to go to a regular grocery store.  We got lost and took a nice drive around town until we happened upon an organic store.  They did not have fresh basil and I refused to pay 6.99 for 5 oz. of pre-made pesto sauce.  I settled for a dry pesto mix and some other ingredients and 60 bucks later, we were heading back home.

There's no pine nuts or REAL pesto sauce in this, hence the "sorta" in the title.

I was pretty amazed at how well this turned out though, especially since I made it up all on my own!

Okay, you will need the following:

2 (28 oz) cans of tomatoes
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
white bread
chicken broth (about a cup)
salt, pepper
pesto sauce mix (1/2 packet)
splash of milk
2 tablespoons of sugar


1. Chop your onion and garlic and heat on medium in a skillet with olive oil for a few minutes.
2. Add cans of tomatoes and all the liquid and bring to a boil.
3.  Add a few chunks of white bread (leave out the crust).  I got this idea from when RH made gazpacho.
4. Add pesto seasoning and let boil for 5 minutes.
5. Use a food processor to get it nice and blended.  I had to do two batches in order to fit it all.
6. Return to stove and add chicken broth until the soup is as thin as you would like.
7.  Stir in salt, pepper, sugar and a touch of milk.
8.  Do a taste test to see if you need more salt, etc.
9. Serve with crusty bread or dare I say....GRILLED CHEESE! mmmmhmmm.

Enjoy!

Here's the photo play-by-play:

Ingredients

Adding the bread!

My old school can opener.  Gets the job done!

That's not mold!- it's the pesto powder.

Letting it all stew together

Before

After

Final product

I wish I had made grilled cheese to go with this! Oh well, keeping it low-cal.

PS: This would be awesome with a dollop of sour cream.

Veggie Beef Soup

Veggie Beef Soup:

Work some left-over magic by using pot-roast beef and simple ingredients to make this tasty soup.

My husband and I were getting tired of eating sunday's pot roast everyday! So, I figured I needed to do something new with the left overs I had sitting in the fridge... or else it would end up in the trash or in the fridge making a fuzzy smelly microbiology experiment while we forgot it was ever in there.


This soup took about 30 minutes to make.


You'll need:

shredded left over pot roast or something similar (including juices)

stock (I used 2 cartons of chicken stock and 1/2 a carton of leftover beef stock from the pot roast recipe)

can of diced tomatoes

bag of frozen vegetables (the old school kind with corn, peas, green beans, carrots and limas)

potato, cubed

1/2 pound bag of pasta (technically, "pastini", the little baby kind you get in diner soups, like orzo)


There's only 4 steps, and one of 'em is EATING:

1. Throw everything into a big soup pot.

2. Here's the slightly interesting part. I took about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of the junk in the bottom of my cast iron dutch oven and put it in a food processor for a minute. This included juices, big chunks of herbs, mushrooms and carrots that were in the pot roast. Add to the big soup pot for a flavor boost.

3. Simmer everything together for 20-30 minutes.

4. EAT!


PS: Oh, the irony!!! I was trying to get rid of leftovers. This recipe made so much, I ran out of storage containers and had to use plastic baggies. FYI: Putting soup into plastic baggies is NOT an easy task.


Also, please take note of how clean my fridge is. Thank you.