Bloody Mary Bisque (Healthy and Easy!)

I know, I know - Bloody Mary Bisque? What?? Well, as per usual for this time of year, I'm getting heaps of tomatoes from the CSA and it's game on versus the fruit flies to see who gets to eat them. Usually I make some form of tomato soup for my end game. Deconstructed, what is tomato soup? Tomato juice and seasoning. What are Bloody Marys? Tomato juice and seasoning. I've never been happy with using canned tomato sauce or the V8 types in my soups, so I figured I'd check out the liquor aisle. Because that always has the answers.What sold me was a new horseradish mixer. I can usually take or leave a Bloody Mary, but if there's horseradish, I want six. The nice thing about making tomato soup with mixer is that you get a bunch more flavor without having to use a bunch of cream.

Ingredients:
1 TBS butter
1/2 onion, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
4 medium-large tomatoes, cut into chunks
1.5 cups of your favorite Bloody Mary mixer
.5 cup broth
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup milk, half and half, or cream if you really like
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 cup vodka (optional, but it's Bloody Mary Bisque)
Big handful basil, chopped

Directions:
One reason I like making soups is that since it all gets blended together anyway, it doesn't really matter how you chop stuff. So throw your butter in a big pot with a lid, turn the heat to medium, and once it melts, toss in your onion. While it cooks a bit, crush your garlic, and toss it in too. Give it a stir a couple of times until the garlic and onion start to brown.

Toss in your tomatoes, mixer, broth, salt and pepper. Cover and cook 20 minutes or so until everything is nice and squishy. Turn off heat. If you have an immersion blender, stick it in the pot and puree. If you don't have an immersion blender, go get one. With the blender stick running on low, slowly pour in your milk, then add your yogurt. This will help prevent the dairy from curdling, which it likes to do when it gets hot.

Add your vodka and basil, and stir it all up. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Cheers!

Healthy Zucchini Summer Vegetable Bisque with shredded cheese

Since I haven't done enough complaining to people in person about how overloaded we are with zucchinis, I thought I'd share my woes with you. Before I made this soup today, I already ate eggplant and yellow summer squash. Even the dog, who is ecstatic to receive anything edible, has started getting suspicious of the large chunks of it that keep showing up in his dish. I'm starting to worry that 95% of my DNA is going to be zucchini - though Wikipedia tells me zucchini is the same species as pumpkin (what??), so I'm basically okay with that. But I digress to potential horror stories when I'm supposed to be writing about soup.

Oh, fascinating soup.

*cough*

This is a flexible recipe. Besides the zukes, I used stuff that was threatening to rot, but there are LOADS of other options here. More root veggies would work, different greens, you get the idea. It's good at using stuff up in a way that gives you a different flavor and texture than the one you've been eating eight hundred times per day all season. So take the ingredients list with a grain of salt (pun intended), and toss whatever you like in the pot.

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
3 large or 4 small zucchinis, sliced, chopped, or cut up in some way 
A few large greens, cut into pieces. I used swiss chard and beet greens, stems, and all.
2 carrots, sliced
Several cloves of garlic, chopped
6 cups stock (roughly)
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups regular or dairy-free milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
large handful basil
few sprigs parsley
couple sprigs cilantro (or just more parsley)
1 TBS dried oregano
Shredded cheese of choice

Directions:
In a really large pot (seriously, this makes about 1.5 gallons), saute onions 2-3 minutes in some oil or cooking spray. Dump in all your other veggies. Saute a few more minutes to get the veggies to wilt and start releasing juices. Cover veggies with stock, throw in bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Cover and turn down heat. Simmer 15-20 minutes, or until everything is nice and squishy. Turn off heat, taste, and add salt and pepper as needed.

Slowly pour in milk and cream. Stir in yogurt and add basil. Now take your lovely, fabulous immersion blender and Amalgamate! Amalgamate! If bisque is too thin, add more yogurt or cook longer. If too thick, add more stock.

If you do not have an immersion blender, get off your computer, go to the store, and buy one right this second. Or order one online and select one day shipping. I'm not kidding. They are inexpensive and you will hate yourself for having to do this with a blender.

Perform taste test. If satisfactory, you're done! If it tastes like it's missing something, add the other herbs, adjust salt and pepper, and blend again. This will likely depend on the quality of your stock. Nice stock will already have the flavors of parsley, etc. The stuff I used tasted like salt and food dye. Delicious.

When seasoning is satisfactory, ladle into bowls and top with cheese. Really any cheese would be fine. I used Parmesan because that's what was in the fridge. Serve with toast if desired. Voila.

Sick Day Chicken Soup

Blarg. Sorry for not posting in a bit. I have been sick and mostly subsiding on bread and pretzels, as simple carbs appeared to be the only thing I could keep down. Yesterday, however, was a big day: Yesterday, I graduated to chicken soup! From a can. (It was gross.) Justin found this quite unacceptable and made some real chicken soup for me to have today (isn't he great) instead of more gross stuff. Since we have pretty much the same idea when it comes to chicken soup I don't feel bad putting a picture of the soup he made and giving you my recipe. It'll look and taste pretty much the same. There's nothing really special or unique about this recipe, but it's good, solid (and liquid), feel-better food.

Ingredients:
2 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 small onion, or 1/2 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
1 small potato, peeled and cubed
6 cups chicken broth
handful fresh parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
Egg Noodles, optional

Directions:
I like to use my 3 quart crock pot for this, but you could do it stove top.

Saute your onion and celery about 5 minutes or until just getting soft. (You can skip this step but it tastes better if you don't.) In the mean time, rinse chicken, pat dry, and season with a little salt and pepper. Put them in the bottom of your pot. On top, layer carrots, potato, then onions and celery. Pour in your chicken broth. Cover and cook on low 6-8 hours (or cover and simmer on stovetop 30 minutes to an hour). I like the slow cooker here because when it's done, the chicken just falls apart and is super tender.

If you are going to use noodles, cook them separately 10 minutes before soup is done. Drain, and store separately from soup so they don't turn into soggy, half-disintegrated noodles. You can add them in serving by serving before reheating.

Five minutes before soup is done, toss in the parsley. You want it wilted, not super soggy.

Slurp down and feel healthy.

Frozen

No not the movie. Sorry to disappoint you, but I think I am the only one who hasn't seen it. I mean Vermont is frozen. The ground is frozen, the sky is frozen, even the very air seems to be maybe ten degrees from absolute zero. The only reason I would not say all atomic motion has ceased is because of the wind. Oh god the wind. We have wind chills of between -30 and -50 right now, which makes it a really great day to stay inside and do nothing but drink cocoa and eat SOUP. So here is a recipe for soup that is very warming. It has a mild heat to it and packs a lot of flavor with few calories and plenty of nutritional value.

I call it "International Soup a la Skittlez."

(Hi Skittlez!)

Skittlez is a really cool person who spent hours slaving away over a pot of soup for his friends, and it was delicious. It came from a fancy looking cookbook, but it was so good I figured I had to go home and try to replicate it immediately. It has basically every flavor of every cuisine you can imagine. You will taste curries of India followed by simmered Bok Choy reminiscent of Asian soups, followed by lemony cilantro of Mexican cuisine, and then it is brought back home via flavors of New England with apples and cider. I don't know if my rendition is anything like the cook book's, but I definitely didn't spend hours on it. Maybe just one. Another great thing about this recipe is it is highly adjustable. You can adjust all of the flavors to your liking very easily.

So here we go.

Ingredients:

One pound butternut squash, peeled and cubed (if you can't find exactly a one pound squash, no sweat. You can easily use more.)

2 large or 3 small carrots, peeled and sliced

One head of Bok Choy

Several cloves of garlic, minced (probably 3-4 unless you are me, in which case between 8-8,000)
4-6 cups vegetable broth
1 lemon, sliced
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped (if you hate cilantro, use parsley, or better yet lemongrass if you can find it)
1 TBS ground ginger (or to taste)
1 TBS red curry powder or paste (you can add more to taste later)
Pinch cayenne (more if you like it hot)
2 large apples, peeled and chopped
1 package sausage of choice, sliced (I used apple chicken)

12 oz bottle hard cider (regular cider diluted a bit would also work)
1 TBS corn starch
1 bunch green onions, sliced

Directions:
Heat a large stock pot over medium heat. Give it a spritz of cooking spray. (Or a slab of butter. Shh. I won't tell anyone.) Dump your squash and carrots in the pot and saute until the squash slightly caramelizes and gets a little soft on the outside (5-10 min depending on how big your squash cubes are). Add your bok choy and saute more until wilted.

Add enough broth to cover all those veggies, and toss in cilantro, lemon, ginger, curry powder/paste, and cayenne. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat. Simmer for as long as it takes to do the next part.

Throw your apples in frying pan. Saute until they get slightly tender, less than 5 minutes. Add sausage slices and cook through. Pour in half of your cider. Whisk the rest of the cider with corn starch to make a slurry, and add that as well. Heat until bubbly and the cider reduces by more than half.

In the mean time, taste your soup without paying attention to anything, burn your mouth, and promptly drop your spoon. Swear loudly. Adjust seasonings.

When the apples and sausages are done, divvy them into bowls and put the rest of the soup over the top. Sprinkle the green onions over the top. Wait for it to cool to non-burning temperature before eating.