Soup. So simple. Or at least it can be. I can’t remember when I first started cooking, but I know I have been watching my dad cook soup since I was a kid. And I’m not going to lie, he ROCKS at it. So much so that I think I kind of avoided soups. I wouldn’t ever make them as good as him, and when he makes them I get to take litres home. So soup was off the list. I make all kinds of Asian inspired cuisine (all dishes my dad has never made…just hitting me now…lol writing is such a wonderful thing) and I bake a TONNE now, but soups, they were kind of off the table.
That is until Mike or Jackie made the Eat Clean Diet’s carrot ginger soup. I had to make it. And so it began. I still am more prone to make chili, but soup is definitely now on the radar in my kitchen.
I was home the other day, looking in the fridge for what I wanted to use up. I have been making a much more conscious effort to not waste food, even if it means eating something I’m not really “feeling”.
The fridge was pretty bare. Five already peeled carrots from muffin making earlier in the week, half a peeled sweet potato, the remainder of a little bag of mini potatoes that had been spilled all over the fridge and floor multiple times (maybe I shouldn’t have torn a hole in the SIDE!) and some apples we picked last weekend in the Valley at Mason’s.
Thinking of the ingredients in the Carrot Soup I so much enjoy, an Instagram post from Kyla of Shanti Yoga and a picture my friend Avril shared on Facebook I think last fall, I took these lackluster ingredients and made a plan.
I chunky chopped the veggies (doesn’t that sound fun…chunky chop…no wonder my kids are silly!) and apple, added an onion and a couple cloves of garlic. I put it all on my pre-heated Pampered Chef baking stone (my absolute favorite kitchen thing! I bake everything on these (with the exception of runny or messy things…like no lasagna in mine because it doesn’t have edges!) at 325. I drizzled a couple tbsp’s of olive oil (would have used coconut of I hadn’t run out, knowing that I was going to add coconut milk in the end to make it a bit Thai style) sprinkled on a 1/2 tsp of ground ginger, a couple tbsp of curry powder and some garlic powder, pepper and sea salt. I let them cook in the oven for 20 min and then flipped and left them cooking for about 20 more minutes.
Once the fork went straight through the veggies with no resistance I knew they were ready. I scooped all of the veggies into the blender, added a cup of organic chicken stock and a cup of unsweetened coconut milk. Blender blended. We enjoyed. And it was healthy. AND it used up veggies that would probably have gone to waste otherwise. AND well that’s it….it is just soup!
I could have handled a little more spice in my soup, and added some green onions and pepper when I sat down to nosh, but it was a pretty easy way to use up the veggies and it fed four of us perfectly
(If you count my mom, Alex and myself as one each… and letting Addy check off her bites to make it to 15 bites, and Finn eating tuna….)
And my words of wisdom. You know, because I am so wisdomus….(FRIENDS reference anyone?)
Just because someone does something, doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
Someone else’s success doesn’t mean your failure.
So go ahead.
Try it.
Make soup.
