Cooking from Scratch
Ah, soups; we love ’em in the colder months.
You might not think it gets cold here in Southern Arizona, but it does. Not the bone-numbing cold of the upper midwest, but we will have a few nights below freezing each winter. (Yes, we know all you Minnesotans are laughing at us right now. It’s okay; we don’t mind). When this happens, our minds turn toward soup as a warming meal.
Continue reading “Cream of Cauliflower Soup”
We’ve wanted to try this recipe for a long time. Why haven’t we? Well, we really don’t know. Perhaps it’s that it calls for carrot juice. Or, perhaps it because it’s mainly a carrot soup without much in the way of other flavors. But, we think that the most likely reason is that it’s a soup served chilled. We don’t know about you, but our soups are hot and that’s the way we like them. Can we change?
Continue reading “Chilled Carrot Soup with Sage Mousse”
Two things came together for this soup. First, we picked up more sweet potatoes from the CSA this week, bringing our total to six. That might not seem like very many, but, for two people, six largish potatoes are a bit much, especially given the other produce we have to eat this week; we try to eat almost everything from our CSA share on a weekly basis. Why have fresh food that you don’t eat fresh? The second thing is a bit more mundane. Continue reading “Moroccan Sweet Potato Soup”
You might think that this recipe is just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, and you could certainly make it up for dinner on the 17th; however, we have to tell you that we’re not sure how Irish this particular recipe is. Sure, you can find plenty of Irish versions of potato leek soup, but, as far as we could tell, most of them used heavy cream, which we didn’t have on hand. So, we went with this recipe, and, based on the book from which it came, it might just be a Continue reading “Potato Leek Soup”
At least once a week, we simmer the vegetable trimmings that we’ve collected over the past few days. Onion peels or wilted tops from green onions, carrot peelings, the tops and bottoms of squash that we’ve trimmed off, the germ from garlic, even corn cobs. Those trimmings, while they’re edible and have a lot of flavor, might not look perfect in a finished dish. So, we save them to make stock. It’s a nice way to use up all the vegetables that people have worked very hard to produce for us.
Continue reading “Avgolemono (Egg Lemon Soup)”
Every week our CSA puts together a one-page newsletter for members to peruse while, or after, they pick up their vegetables. On the front, there’s generally an article about a vegetable that we’re getting that week, or some information about changes going on at the farm, or, as in the past week’s newsletter, one of the volunteers described how she used the previous week’s produce. As we read through it, we noticed that the author, Lorraine, stated that she knew immediately the potatoes were going to be used for Polish Potatoes in Buttermilk.
Continue reading “Polish Potatoes and Buttermilk”
Yes, really. This is the recipe they’ve used at the White House for state dinners. Now, you can use it at your house for any dinner you choose. Are you thinking that it’ll be a difficult dish? It’ll involve techniques learned in the best cooking schools in France and ingredients flown in fresh from around the globe? After all, they have a staff of chefs standing by 24/7 at the White House. How in the world can we compete with that?
Continue reading “Presidential Mushroom Soup”