AnthonySundaySoup

Happy Birthday Month to the Pastry Chef

2012-02-05T20:31:00.001-08:00

Thank goodness the Pastry Chef was so excited to see her birthday cake that she showed up at twenty to four because we were able to put her to work! She made the mistake of asking how she could help, and the next thing she knew, the Southerner had her sweeping the living room. Meanwhile, I was working furiously on her cake, trying to get it iced so I could make the bread. Yes...at twenty to four.

In spite of her worries that the Southerner might get boring or the wrong birthday candles, I did talk her into letting him go to the store for them, and she rolled out the dough for this flat bread*, while I fried it up. We filled the house with smoke, which is why I usually make it long before the guests arrive, but it was so tasty, everyone forgave me.

I checked the blog yesterday to see when the last time was that I'd made one of my favourite soups...split red lentil with onion and lemon, and it was last February, so that's what we had. This is a very popular soup, so I made a lot, and we put a pretty good dent in it.

Lots of people showed up (they'd heard there was going to be cake) and we had a very fun time. There were even two miniature donkeys in the yard! The Engineers are creating a mini-farm on their one acre, and they recently got two tiny donkeys and they brought them along... as a sort of Sunday Soup Show and Tell. They were unbelievably cute, but it was too dark for the Southerner to get a picture.

As you probably know if you read this blog, the Pastry Chef is not only a fabulous, beautiful, lovely person in her own right, but she also has a wonderful family. Very nice parents, and she's the sister of the late Sous Chef. A year ago, the Sous Chef told me that the Pastry Chef would like a maple syrup cake ** for her birthday. We never made it though, because the Pastry Chef couldn't come to soup in February or March. So, yesterday, I made a maple syrup cake. It's supposed to be a sheet cake with icing, but the Pastry Chef requested the heart-shaped layer cake pans, so I doubled the recipe and made three layers. I needed something to fill it with, so I whipped the thick part of coconut milk (chill it and it will separate from the coconut water, then you just whip it like whipped cream) mixed with maple syrup. I put that between the layers, and then iced it with maple syrup icing.

After eating a piece, the Writer said, "You should be granted full Canadian citizenship on the strength of the cake alone." So I guess you could say it was a success!

Here's a picture from the Southerner of me and the Pastry Chef.

Happy Birthday, Pastry Chef!

*For the bread, I used olive oil instead of shortening.
** I used coconut oil instead of butter in the cake, and hippie vegan butter in the icing.

And we're off...

2012-01-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012 Everyone!!!!!

Toooooo exhausted from the holidays to write much.

Soup - White bean and carrot

Bread - Corn muffins with red pepper and onion

Guests - Many! We are so blessed.

Special treats - Yummy fruitcake, homemade pita, Christmas bread, blue cheese dip & crackers, pesto may0 & chips.

Tea - David's Three Lemon

Cutest Guest Award - Tie goes to Miss Sophie & The Pastry Chef who cuddled all evening!

Quote of the Night - The Chef: We have such nice friends.

Highlight - The Southerner did the clean-up!

2012 is off to a GREAT start!
May it bring you joy, peace, love, and lots of soup!

The New House!

2011-12-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

Today was our first Sunday Soup in two months because last month we were under construction. Plus we went to Victoria to hear the Fiddler play a viola recital (ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT, by the way!). Boy were the guests surprised when they showed up today! The writing cabin is almost done out in the yard, the deck has been replaced and there's a brand new grand staircase leading up to the front doors, the wall between the kitchen and the living room is gone, and we got rid of a bunch of furniture and then divided our living room into two areas...a seating area, and a dining area.

Oh, and did I mention the AMAZING double skylights which are a work of art, thanks to Mr. Reno? They really were la piece de resistance*. Forgive my unaccented French. I'm too lazy to look up the accent marks.

The soup wasn't bad either. At least, judging by the very small amount left. It was an eight bean soup...or maybe six if you don't count lentils and split peas as beans. And I made my regular standby no-knead bread that, really...people love because well, it's really, really good. And all it is is flour, salt, yeast, and water.

The company was diverse and the house was full. Appearances were made by many of the regulars, like the Pastry Chef, the Musician, and the Fleece Lady. Also dropping in were some we haven't seen in a while, which was nice too! In addition to all the oohs and ahhs, there was a bit of je ne sais quois* in the air...maybe it's because the house feels so much more roomy, so people talked louder, maybe it was that some had just come from a Christmas music concert, or maybe it was just because we hadn't seen each other in a while, but it really was a jovial Sunday Soup. And the last one of the year!

*The foreign phrases are for the Builder (of the writing cabin) since he's French and he dropped in today too. I thought I should try to make him feel at home since he practically lives here these days, even though whenever he's working, he says, "I'm not here. You don't see me." because he's supposed to be somewhere else.

That's about it for today. See y'all in 2012!

Oh, speaking of 2012...guess what else happens next year? Yep! My next book comes out! Since I don't think I've shared the cover here yet, here you go.

Sunday Soup Potluck

2011-10-02T19:15:00.000-07:00

Today was our annual Sunday Soup Potluck. Since I always tell the guests that they don't have to bring anything, we think it's only fair to have a potluck once a year. The end of September is our anniversary of moving to Canada, so it seems like a great time to do it.

It was a wonderful day, full of old friends and new, lots of good food and two soups - Mushroom Onion, and Black Bean Vegetable. I have to admit though that I would not have been able to do it if it weren't for the Southerner. As most of you know, the Sous Chef passed away unexpectedly in August and we're all muddling through with broken hearts. I honestly don't think I could've made the soup last night if the Southerner hadn't come out into the kitchen to help me. Instead of focusing on my loss and how much I missed her in my life, I was able to think about the food we were making, and we honoured the memory of the Sous Chef while we cooked. If you haven't read my blog post about her, here is a link which I hope will make you smile.

And there really is a lot to smile about. After only four years here, we were surrounded by wonderful, loving friends, the Pastry Chef made a delicious cake from scratch (she used to think "from scratch" meant from a cake mix, but now she's so savvy she can substitute ingredients when she needs to!), the food was wonderful, and the cats got extra doses of attention. Life is good.

For those of you who couldn't come, well, there's always next year! Thank you to everyone, you have made our time here so happy.

Love, the Chef and the Southerner

The photo is the Sous Chef on the left, and me on the right.

P.S. No Sunday Soup in November as we're off to hear the Fiddler play viola (yes, you read that right). See you in December!

Sunday Soup is Canceled This Week

2011-09-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi All...
Early Sunday morning bulletin...For the first time ever, Sunday Soup is canceled due to illness. Victor's got a bug and we don't want to spread it around even more (others on the island have it, too).

Fortunately, because I was going to make Egg Drop Soup with Garden Spinach, and it's best made fresh, I am not stuck with 9 gallons of soup. Unfortunately, no soup this week! I might have to make a small batch just for us.

Next month is our Fourth Annual Thank God We Live on this Island Potluck, so make sure you drop in, if you're around!

Those Summer Days (and vegetables)

2011-08-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

Today was an excellent Sunday Soup. The sun was shining (a rare thing this summer), the veggies were fresh and from the farmer and various friends, and the soup was Summer Vegetable. The Sous Chef made the bread last night, and I baked it this morning. I've been experimenting with other breads lately, so it was nice to have the basic bread again - nice and simple and fresh.

I found this great company where I can order fruit and vegetables from the Okanagen (BC) and they pick it on Friday and deliver it on Sunday, so I took delivery of 11lbs of BC cherries and 10lbs of blueberries today. Oh, double yum! I will have stained fingers from pitting cherries for the freezer, but come winter, it will be so worth it when I make smoothies.

We had a very nice turnout today, lots of people packed onto our narrow deck (which will be coming down and replaced with a wider one, hopefully this fall). After everyone left, The Sous Chef came over to cook dinner with me (she may be moving away, so we're doing crash cooking lessons 5 nights a week for the next month). We made pasta with cararmelized onions, sauteed zucchini, fresh garlic, and fresh basil. It was delicious! And then we capped it off with fresh fruit.

I can't believe by the next time we meet up for Sunday Soup we will be thinking about fall. It's gone so fast! I hope you had an excellent summer day today though, and enjoy the rest of the sunny days too.

Old Slow Me!

2011-07-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

Just realized I forgot to blog after last Sunday's soup. Perhaps it was because of the sheer hoards of people who showed up. Don't get me wrong, we were thrilled to see them all, but kind of surprised. Especially since it was a holiday weekend and there was so much going on all over.

I made a yummy cauliflower soup and pesto bread. Luckily, the Swimmer (a visitor from another island who SWAM here!) brought two baguettes, otherwise we would've run out of bread. He also brought red wine and brie (and no, he did not carry these items while swimming, but that would've been cool).

Because only four people showed up for SS in June, and as I said before, it was a busy holiday weekend, I only made one pot of soup...and we had 19 people here, including myself and the Southerner. I ended up defrosting the leftover soup from June for the last five guests! The Fleece Lady brought dips and chips, and there were a few other contributions too, so in the end, it was a bit of a party. The weather even sort of cooperated in that it didn't rain and most of the guests were hearty Canadians, so they had no problem sitting on the deck.

It occurred to me afterward that we should've had a cake for the Sous Chef because July is her birthday, but I'm sure she'll come out okay at some point this month, so not to worry. I'll even dig out the SS Birthday Princess banner and let her wear it on the big day.

Thanks to all who came, and sorry to miss those of you who couldn't make it. Maybe we'll see you in August!

Rhubarb Soup? Maybe not...

2011-06-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking perhaps now that SS is only once a month I might need to remind people. Either that, or they're all tired of my soup! The only people that did come are ones I reminded the day before, so it was a bit on the quiet side, but it was very nice.

First The Actor showed up, and we had a lovely chat over broccoli almond soup...for about an hour and a half. Just as he was getting up to leave, someone pulled into the driveway. I said to him, "Are you sure you want to leave because your daughter is here now?" He ended up staying for a bit, and his daughter The Farmer came in with a couple who are visiting the island with the idea of living here permanently. We had some lovely crackers that The Farmer made, along with soup and bread, and she brought me rhubarb as a hostess gift.

I got very excited because I am a rhubarb JUNKIE. Every time I go to someone's house and I see they have rhubarb I get all shifty and try to get The Southerner to distract them while I snag some. Actually, several people have been very generous with theirs this year, and I'm already getting a very nice stash in my freezer. The Actor said he has some I can have too. Yay! It is so great in bread (make your favourite banana bread recipe and sub roasted rhubarb for 2 of the 3 bananas).

Anyway, that's about it for this month. Summer seems to have finally arrived here, too! Yay!

Take care, and eat lots of soup. See you next month.

Soup Debut

2011-05-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

First, join me in sending out warm congratulations to the Sous Chef who is graduating from University this spring! She's just finished her thesis and moved back to the island, so we will be doing even more cooking. Yay! To celebrate, I handed her the recipe for Tomato-Orange soup and gave her the ingredients and she made the soup herself from start to finish. It was a big hit and every bowl got eaten (The Southerner had the last one with his dinner after everyone left).

We had quite the international gathering today. We all live here now, but there were people here today who were originally from the U.S., Scotland, France, the UK, Sweden, Holland, and yes, even from Canada! For a while, it looked like The Neighbour was going to be the only Canadian, but then we got a rush of Canucks at 6:30pm.

Because I can't eat tomatoes anymore (related to potatoes), I've been experimenting with peaches. For example, I made a peach pizza sauce that's quite delicious. And for today, I made Peach-Orange soup. I used all the same ingredients for the Tomato-Orange, so it had onions, garlic, thyme, salt & pepper in it, and it turned out pretty darn good. The Neighbour also can't eat tomatoes, so she had a bowl of the Peach soup instead and loved it. Out of necessity comes invention (is that the saying or did I mess it up and that's just some weird version of what I meant to say? Who cares. I'm too tired from socializing to look it up).

So...a very good day was had by all! Or at least by me and The Southerner! Hope y'all had a great weekend too. See you in June.

April is the best month!

2011-04-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

April is my favourite month, and yes, it's because my birthday is this month. And so is The Southerner's. Now that we have SS only once a month, if there are any birthdays, then we have cake and The Southerner wanted an old fashioned coconut cake like his grandmother used to make. I had never made one before, which would be obvious to anyone who has, when I said, "Sure. No problem." Because, you know, cracking that stupid coconut is NOT as easy as they make it look on Youtube (but just as dangerous). However, I did it. Yesterday. This morning I noticed our cat, Sophie (who also has an April birthday), playing with a chunk of stray coconut that had apparently gone flying yesterday when I hit it with a hammer.

Anyway, we had cake!

In addition to making the actual cake layers (with homemade lemon curd - this is so easy you should never buy lemon curd in a jar) I also made coconut whipped cream frosting. I have to admit, the frosting is what got me really excited. I don't really like frosting, and while we do eat eggs, we don't generally eat dairy, so I have not had whipped cream in a really long time, but it's the only kind of frosting I really like (except cream cheese, and I can make a vegan cashew cream cheese icing to live for!) so I was flummoxed about how to frost this cake. But then Google saved the day.

All you have to do is get a can of coconut milk (not light) and put it in the fridge for a while. Also, chill your bowl and beater. When it's good and cold, open the can and cut a hole through the thickened coconut cream so you can drain the liquid out (use it to soak the cake layers for extra moisture). Then you simply put the coconut cream into your cold bowl and beat it on high for about 5-6 minutes, add powdered sugar (I used 1/3 cup, sifted) and keep beating it. It is AMAZING (If you are vegan, you have to make sure you use vegan sugar or some other sweetener). It was soooooo delicious! After I frosted the cake, I did chill it for thirty minutes before adding the fresh coconut to the top and sides because it seemed like it was starting to melt a little, but in the end, it held up great.

So many people came today, I'm not going to mention everyone, but I will say that the soup was Curried Cauliflower Rice and the bread was foccacia. Also, some of the guests brought yummy things like gingerbread, wheat bread, and chips and dip. So thanks to everyone and if your birthday is in May, let me know! As of right now, I don't have any on my list and we don't want to miss an opportunity for cake.

Happy Birthday to Sophie (the cat), The Southerner, The Fleece Lady, The Chef, Kim of The Brouhahas, My Agent, and everyone else in April (see how I covered myself there?). Have a slice of cake! It's fresh!

Once a Month is a Party!

2011-02-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

So it turns out that there are many benefits to having Sunday Soup only once a month, in addition to not having to clean the house so often. For instance, a lot more people come. Now they know if they don't come this week, they have to wait a whole month, so it gets prioritized. Also, even though I encourage people to join us without bothering to bring anything, when it's once a month, more people bring yummy stuff!

The Fleece-lady brought a lovely homemade salsa with chips. The Englishman brought me a lemon he GREW in his house! The Ex-Librarian & the Hiker brought wine. The Farmers & their friend (first time to SS, so she doesn't have a name yet) brought homemade crackers, cheese, and an avocado (yum!). And then, of course, there was the soup.

Today we had one of my two favourite soups...an Indian dal soup. It's made with red lentils which turn yellow when you cook them, and has onions and garlic, and lemon in it. Yum. It's a bit spicy, so The Neighbour just tasted it. The Pastry Chef probably wouldn't have liked it, but she couldn't come anyway (we missed her). And we missed the Sous Chef too, who did not come home for the weekend. But she did buy herself her first real (gorgeous) German chef's knife a couple of weeks ago and so she can chop like a pro now.

The Realtor also made an early escape from work and showed up - due to the fact that no one wanted to go to his open house when the Super Bowl was on...oh, I'm feeling the need to make a really lame Souper Bowl joke here. Someone stop me, please...?

Also, The Musician and the Irish One dropped in, and maybe I've forgotten a few, but I think that's it. It was great fun. And the best part? I mean, the best part after seeing all the guests and eating the great food? While I am typing this, The Southerner is cleaning the kitchen! And he's going to make avocado omelets with eggs so fresh I actually had to wash them myself because the lady we buy them from took them out from under the hens to sell to him! And we'll add some of The Fleece Lady's salsa to them too.

Anyway, a great time was had by all, except maybe Marley (the black cat) because right at the beginning she got a little stressed by all the people and took a whack at both The Englishman and The Irish One so she had to have a time out and go nap in my office. All is well now though (she's still sleeping!). And the rest of us had a great time.

See you next month!

Happy 2011!

2011-01-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone! We just had the first Sunday Soup of the year and it was very, very nice. Great friends, great conversations, candles, the fire in the woodstove, white bean soup and lots of fresh bread. The Fleece Lady brought lovely feta cheese and olives, we broke out the holiday cookies, and consumed gallons of tea. And not just by The Southerner, although I do think he put away quite a lot of African Mint tea!

Today was actually a full day of socializing and food. We started off with brunch at The Sous and Pastry Chefs' house this morning. We just had time to rush home afterward and bake the bread, put the soup in the slow cooker, and clean up the house. Luckily no one showed up until around 4:30 and by then we were looking calm, cool, and collected. Fooled 'em again!

I have to admit it does seem strange, and a little sad too, to write these posts and not email them to my grandmother anymore. I think of her every day, but especially on Sunday Soup days. Still, she's with us in spirit!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and The Southerner and I wish you a very Happy 2011. May your year be filled with love, peace, and lots of good food. Thank you so much for being part of our lives, whether it's in person in our home, or simply reading this blog. We really value you all.

Thank you and Happy New Year!

Sunday Soup This Sunday!

2010-12-31T19:58:00.000-08:00

Don't forget, this Sunday is the first Sunday of the month, as well as 2011, so don't forget to come to Sunday Soup. Looking forward to seeing y'all!

Last Sunday Soup of 2010

2010-12-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the last Sunday Soup of 2010. Time does fly when you're eating soup with friends and family! It's been a big year around here and SS has gone through some changes. There was the second annual SS in May, Sunday Salad, hosted by the Sous Chef and the Pastry Chef when I was on my book tour, a hiatus in July and another in October. And we also lost one of SS's greatest fans, my grandmother (see post below).

Another change is we only have SS on the first Sunday of each month (which apparently still does not mean I will have my act together enough to blog each month as I totally forgot in November). All in all, it's been a wonderful year though and I'm glad the SS tradition will carry on, even if it is just once a month.

It's actually a good thing because we found out that I'm allergic to potatoes. Thanks to the Southerner's excellent use of deductive reasoning. For years either he or the Sous Chef has had to cut up the potatoes when we made the soup because otherwise I would have a hay fever-like reaction. Turns out, all those stomach aches? Yeah...potatoes! Who knew? Apparently, The Southerner. He said, "Ummm...maybe if you're allergic to the peels, you're allergic to the potatoes." Turns out, he was right. Once a month he gets to be right. I was glad that's how he used his opportunity in August. And if we had soup every week now, I don't know how I could possibly come up with that many soups and not use potatoes! Seems impossible to me.

Tonight was a very nice, quiet evening. Chili was on the menu, along with some of my regular bread and The Fleece Lady's wonderful red pepper dip. We also had mandarin oranges and vanilla tea and red wine too. And of course, lots of candles and a fire in the woodstove. They've all left me to clean up (surprise, surprise!) but they had good reason...tonight is the island's holiday choir concert. I hope they all have a wonderful time. And after I'm done...perhaps I'll have that last glass of wine and read a book with the cats in front of the fire. Sounds like a good way to end SS for the year. How about you?

Happy holidays to you all and Happy New Year (a bit early, but you can hang on to the sentiment). Have a great week, and eat lots of soup!

A True Lover of Soup

2010-10-23T18:29:00.000-07:00

This is a very special Sunday Soup post. I come by my love of soup honestly. It's generational. Over the last few years, my grandmother has lived on her own, but not really been up to cooking much. Whenever I visited her, I would make her a big pot of soup and put it in small containers for her freezer because she loved nothing more than a bowl of soup for dinner.

A couple of years ago, my aunt and uncle bought my grandmother a machine that allowed me to email her copies of this blog and then it would print out for her automatically. No computer, no new learning curve, just a weekly update of Sunday Soup. She saved them all in a three ring binder. She loved the blog so much, whenever I knew I'd be going down to Portland, I'd start saving one bowl out of each Sunday Soup and freeze it, then I would take a cooler full of frozen soup for her so she could enjoy all the soups she'd only read about.

Yesterday, Grandma passed away after a short battle with pneumonia. One of the very last things she ate was a bowl of tomato soup. I'm sorry to say it wasn't mine, but I did see her last week, and she was eating soup then too. She was so proud of my book being published, even the nurses knew about it. I always joke that there are two things in my family a person can do to make everyone else proud...be a major league baseball player, or write a book. I think in Grandma's eyes, a good pot of soup also gave you a certain status. It's sad to think I won't be sending her anymore Sunday Soup blog posts, but when my mum asked me if I wanted her collection of SS posts back, my aunt said quickly, "I want that!" so maybe now I'll send the posts to my aunt instead.

Please join me in raising a bowl of soup to one great lady.

Norma Tommerup
1922-2010

The Times They Are A Changin'

2010-09-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

When we started Sunday Soup, we decided to try it for one month and then continue doing it after that for as long as it was still fun. Don't worry, it's still fun, but my life has gotten a lot busier over the last year, as has The Southerner's. It seems like there are more things we'd like to do on the weekends too, and since I work during the week, and The Southerner does a lot of volunteer work on Saturdays, we don't really have a day off to just hang out together...and we like each other, so we want to!

Next week is our third anniversary of our move to Canada. As we have for the last two years, we're having a big pot-luck during Sunday Soup on 26 September. It should be lots of fun! After that, the things are going to change a bit.

First of all, there will be no SS in October. We have a few things planned for a couple of Sundays, so it just makes the most sense to give SS a miss in October. Starting in November, we'll be on a new schedule. We will only have Sunday Soup on the first Sunday of every month.

So...to get you through the rest of the year, here's our schedule:
September 26th - potluck
October - No SS
November - SS on 7th only
December - SS on the 5th only

Today was a very nice SS. Kind of quiet. The Southerner made the soup, a yummy black bean, because I was busy off at a woodworking workshop with The Neighbour. We each made very cool cutting boards and we showed them off at SS. The Pastry Chef arrived with her first place ribbon for her dressage competition today too. She won in both her events. Congrats to you, Sous Chef!

And that's about it for this week. Hope to see you at the Potluck!

Double Dose of SS

2010-09-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post last week because a friend loaned us his entire box set of Monarch of the Glen and we started watching as soon as the last person was out the door. The Southerner was hooked on the Scottish scenery from the first frame and he wants to move there now. But don't worry. We're not going anywhere. He would freeze to death in Scotland!

I know some of you watch TV regularly. Or at at least occasionally, but we watch TV so rarely we have to dust it off in order to see the screen each time we use it. This week, because of Monarch of the Glen we have watched more hours of TV than we've watched in the last three years combined. And we're only through Season 3 (of 7)! And yes, this is why I did not blog last night too.

Anyway, the soup last week was one of my all time favourites. It was a coconut milk-red-curry vegetable soup. You can put any kinds of veggies in it, and/or tofu. It's really yummy. I can't really remember who came last week because all I can think about are the characters in that TV series. I don't think any of them were here, but I can't be sure.

Oh, wait! We actually did have a guest from Scotland last week. The Sous Chef brought her houseguest who was over here for a visit from Glasgow. I made sure she got some nice English Breakfast tea since everywhere she went on this hippie island all she could find was chai and organic herbal blends. I even sent a tin along with them for their road trip to Banff.

This week, I was going to make a nice coriander scented carrot soup, but when The Southerner saw how many of his homegrown carrots it would take, he got a bit shifty. "All of those? But those are for us.... " It kind of reminded me of how The Pastry Chef let her celery die from frost last year instead of eating it because it was too cute to harvest. Anyway, since carrots were out, I made another of my favourite soups, a yummy red lentil dal soup. And there are lots of leftovers in spite of having a pretty full house last night.

I have to admit that I was planning on letting this blog post slide, but then I saw that The Shark mentioned SS on her blog! The Shark has never been to Sunday Soup, but it's on her list of "Things to do Before I Die" so I expect she will swim into the harbour someday and show up at our door.

There's probably more to tell, but I'm taking the day off from work for Labour Day and it's rainy and cool, so I think I'll go see if The Southerner wants to meet on the couch and watch TV, er...read a book.

Drop that egg!

2010-08-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

Today we had egg drop soup with New Zealand spinach that I picked out of the garden this morning. It's best freshly made, so I had hot stock on hand and then had all the other ingredients ready and I made four bowls at a time as people wanted them. It's quite easy and fun to make. You can find the recipe here. Obviously, I used vegetable stock, not chicken stock because this is a vegetarian house.

The Southerner was away for ten days, but got here just a few minutes past four o'clock, so he was in time to visit with everyone and tell us about his trip to bicycle mechanic school in Ashland, Oregon. He's now passed out on the couch, resting up for bedtime (after riding over to the garden to make sure I didn't kill it while he was gone...I mean, to check on its progress).

All in all, a very nice Sunday Soup today. Although, we do have an unusual number of wasps (or yellow jackets, depending on where you're from) on the sunny porch, and it was too cold to sit on the shady porch, so we did have to stay inside. It wasn't that warm though anyway. Fall is already in the air.

By the way, if you're wondering why there wasn't a post last week, it's because only The Neighbour showed up and while our conversation was scintillating, and we actually had a seven course meal, starting with fresh vegetable soup and ending with raspberry mousse in chocolate cups, I was too full to write about it. I'm sorry y'all missed it though. That'll teach you to skip Sunday Soup just because it's 34 degrees outside (that's 93.2 for you Yanks).

Zucchini coming out of our ears...

2010-08-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

Last summer was a great year for zucchini (what summer isn't?). We had one plant and this year, as I defrosted the last of it in June, I begged The Southerner, "Can't you just plant half a plant?" He laughed and then planted TWO! One yellow, one green.

As fast as I can figure out things to do with them, he brings me more. But abundance is a good thing, so I just try to be creative instead of whining. And it turns out, yesterday, he saved my tofu bacon.

We had rain yesterday for the first time since June and because of it, laziness ensued. I slipped on my raingear over my pajamas and went to the farmer's market for breakfast essentials - doughnuts and egg sammiches- and before The Southerner had realized I'd even left the house, I was back and in my pajamas again. I spent the day drinking tea and reading, and then took a nap and when I woke up, The Sous Chef was on her way to cook. Egads! Cook what? I had no idea. At least until I looked around the kitchen and saw the pile of yellow zucchini overflowing in the fruit bowl.

I quickly ran to to my computer and typed in Spicy Zucchini Potato Soup and this recipe popped up. And yes, I did just make up the name of the kind of soup I hoped to make and a recipe did exist online. Magnificent thing, the internet! By the time The Sous Chef had arrived, I had showered and actually looked like I knew what the big cooking plan was. I was back in my pajamas though, so she was a little suspicious.

I've made a lot of zucchini soups. In fact, you may remember last year The Fix-it Guy challenged me to make a zucchini soup every week for the month of August and I did it. And people still came to SS. But this was by far the best one. I think it was the addition of red potatoes. It was also probably the easiest one.

I wasn't quite so quick on the "What are we making for dinner tonight?" question from The Sous Chef though, and we ended up getting The Southerner to make a salad while we "ran an errand." In other words, went to the coffee shop for take-out panini sandwiches - is panini sandwiches redundant? Maybe it should just be panini or sandwiches...either way, it was a lovely day and a nice evening with good food, and today's Sunday Soup was full of friends and frivolity. I hope you have an excellent week and I'll see you here next Sunday.

We're Back!

2010-08-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

Happy August, Everyone!
Boy, July just flew by and Sunday Soup is on again. We've decided to take July and January off each year. We did miss you all, and we're surprisingly low on island gossip, considering I never really thought of Sunday Soup as a gossip hub. I think it's more like we just don't know what our friends are up to these days, what trips they're taking or what concerts they've been to, that sort of thing, not actual gossip.

Today was a fairly quiet, ease-back-into it Sunday Soup. The Pastry Chef and The Sous Chef showed up at the beginning and stayed for a few hours and The Fix-it Guy came alone and held court at the table. It was really nice and relaxing. So relaxing in fact, The Southerner had to make some vanilla black (caffeinated) tea and we had to break out the chocolate in order to keep The Sous Chef awake. After the chefs left, The Neighbour showed up, bearing gifts of our favourite kind...a bag of organic vegetables! While it's true The Southerner is growing us tons of great food, we're always happy to take more organic veggies off anyone's hands! Yay.

The soup today was a special one because it was entirely out of The Southerner's garden (except the celery which came from The Farmers, but don't tell him). It was a lovely and light soup, made with veggie stock, yellow and green zucchini, onions, carrots, potatoes, and the aforementioned celery. I made it this afternoon so it would be really, really fresh and it turned out quite delish.

Because we went to a potluck last night, I totally forgot to make any bread. Since I had the time this morning, I made the more challenging kind, you know...the kind that takes some muscle to stir up and then you have to knead. I used a recipe for herb walnut bread with lemon zest. It's really yummy! And even though we ate tons, there is one whole loaf left! Fabulous.

Before everyone arrived, I toasted a slice of the bread (just to make sure it wasn't poison - I'm thoughtful that way) and added oven roasted tomatoes and olive oil and it was sooooo good! There is definitely more of that in our future. Like, probably for dinner. Oh, guess what we're having? Roasted vegetables from The Southerner's garden and red quinoa. We're pretty much eating some variation on onions, potatoes, carrots, and greens for the rest of the summer and beyond!

I just read a great memoir on learning to cook at le Cordon Bleu in Paris, assuming you eat meat or you aren't too queasy about the details (I am, but I toughed it out) called THE SHARPER YOUR KNIFE, THE LESS YOU CRY. I highly recommend it to any of you foodies out there.

And that's about it for this week. I do want to say that during the hiatus, The Sous Chef had her birthday. While we didn't celebrate it at SS, I did make her a cake and have her over for dinner and she did wear the Birthday Princess banner. Anyway, Happy Birthday a bit late to The Sous Chef!

I'll leave you with this picture. The Neighbour's cat, Tigre is not a favourite of our cat, Miss Marley, so when he followed The Neighbour over to our house, Marley took refuge on top of The Fix-It Guy's truck! So cute, if you ask me.

Sunday Soup is on hiatus for the month of July

2010-07-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

Hi All.
FYI, we're not doing Sunday Soup for the month of July. This was a tough decision for us because summer is such a great time to have wonderful soups made from fresh veggies right out of the garden. It's nice and sunny and we can all gather on the porch too. We usually get lots more people in the summer too, which is fun.

However, we've discovered that there are events in the summer that we'd like to attend and often can't because of SS. This year, two of them are taking place the first two Sundays of July, so we took it as a sign that it was time for a little break for The Chef and some adventures for both her and The Southerner.

So this year, after over two years of continuous soup, we're taking a short break. We'll be back in August though, so don't forget us. And you know what August is...right? Yep! Zucchini Month!

Garden Fresh!

2010-06-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

Today we had Green Goddess Soup. It's called that because it's green and I like alliteration, not because I think I'm a goddess. But if you want to think so, that's okay.

The soup included, from The Southerner's garden: kale & New Zealand Spinach and from The Farmers' garden - organic broccoli. It also had potatoes, green beans, onion, and secret spices. Okay, the secret spices are actually not that secret. I used Italian vinaigrette salad dressing base from Penzey's. I once made salad dressing out of it and it was totally gross, but it's nice in soups.

The bread was the usual, with olive oil. And The Neighbour brought her famous chocolate chip cookies. We were treated to a lovely flute performance by The Flautist (new nickname, for those of you keeping a cast list) on one of those wooden Japanese flutes that I can't spell properly. Very charming and we all enjoyed it. The Fix-it Guy could barely stay upright and if The Southerner hadn't kept him talking, I'm pretty sure he would've slumped all the way down onto the couch and taken a nap. It was because he and The Fleece Lady had traipsed all over the island for the Garden Show.

The Pastry Chef did show up, but The Sous Chef decided to lay low since last night she came over to cook and ended up reading a novel on the couch while I made both the soup and the dinner. That's okay, next time I'm going to read on the couch while she cooks!

And that's about it from here. Hope you have a great weekend.

An absence in the neighbourhood!

2010-06-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again...the Neighbour's birthday. We laid out the Birthday Princess banner (most recently worn by The Fix-it Guy on his birthday - sorry, no photo) and the bread of choice was her favourite, corn bread....but where was the Birthday Princess? Nowhere to be seen, that's where! The banner sat forlorn and abandoned, the cornbread got scarfed down by everyone except The Neighbour, and the very mild (as in not-spicy) three bean soup was enjoyed by all...all except The Neighbour.

Never fear though. She did not fall down her stairs or trip over one of her cats, she simply spent the day on a hike with a friend. And I did manage to save her both soup, and one piece of cornbread.

We had a very nice time in spite of her absence and The Sous Chef brought a bunch of her friends from Uni, so it was something like a party (with soup instead of beer). We had a full house, and even spilled out onto the porch - a very nice day indeed.

And I still have the Birthday Princess banner for the next princess...I believe that might just be The Sous Chef (she's already "ordered" her cake - she wants a vanilla one like last year).

Have a great week everyone!

It wasn't my fault!

2010-06-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, blogger was down so I couldn't post about Sunday Soup. I actually didn't go to Sunday Soup, so it would've been hard to come up with much to write anyway. I had a big week on the road last week (book signings, yay!) and so I actually hid out at The Neighbour's house for a while catching up on my to-do-before-I-go list.

This week was quite the scurrying around for soup. I didn't even make it until 3pm! We'd gone down to Victoria for the weekend to do a book event at Tall Tales Books, and so yesterday was a bit crazy. But I made my old stand-by, Potato-Leek, and everyone was happy. It all worked out great. And The Fix-it guy brought a salad with the yummiest dressing ever. Mmmm...lots of garlic! He even let me keep the leftovers. Oh, and did I mention he grew the lettuce? Yep!

It was nice enough to be out on the porch for the FIRST time all year, so The Neighbour and I sat out there for a while, but there was fresh bread and olive oil on the table, so everyone else stayed in the kitchen, sopping up the oil with the bread and having a lively discussion on...yep, the oil disaster in the Gulf. Sometimes, it's not all fun and games at SS, but serious conversations are part of it too.

Anyway, thanks for checking in and see you next week!

Good to be home...

2010-05-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

The menu was back to soup this week, although I'm quite impressed with my cooking students innovative approach to Sunday Soup last week - making it Sunday Salad instead. I heard that everyone who came kept asking them, "What went wrong with your soup?" and they had to keep explaining nothing went wrong, they hadn't even tried to make any.

Just so you know, they are both very capable of making soup, so I think it's great they tried something new. And The Southerner and I appreciate them covering for us too.

The Southerner and I have mostly given up dairy. If a restaurant salad comes with Parmesan, we'll lick the plates 'cause that's what we miss most, but dairy just isn't good for me and The Southerner is a good husband, so he's given it up too. Anyway, the reason I'm explaining this is because one of the favourite Sunday Soups is corn chowder. I can still make it with Silk (soy milk), but I wanted to try and make a clear corn soup like I'd had in a restaurant recently, so this is what I did.

I made a very light vegetable stock and then I added diced potatoes, sliced leek, red peppers, orange peppers, celery, onion, and a big bag of frozen corn. For seasoning, I used salt, pepper, and thyme. It turned out pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Very light and fresh. I just realized I meant to add carrots, but I forgot. They would've been nice, especially for colour, but it was still bright and cheerful without them. This soup was really fast to make too, which was nice. This week The Southerner played the role of sous chef because we had guests coming all day Saturday and so we had to whip it up while we made dinner Friday night.

Today's SS was fun, with lots of people and a fire because it's cold and rainy, which made it cozy. And yesterday we had quite the bash here on our island, with music, food, a reading and presentation, and book signing to celebrate the Canadian launch of my new book. Wish you could have been there (or maybe you were, and in that case, thanks for coming!).For those of you interested in my book tour, The Southerner put together this very fun slide show of my U.S. events from last week.

See y'all next week!

S.S. - Sunday Salad!

2010-05-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hello world! Pastry Chef Here!
First off I would like to say that if I get your nicknames wrong-I'm sorry.
Second you may be wondering why I'm here. Well, the blogger is off on a little road trip! She is traveling the coast with the Southerner to do book signings! How existing! I'm sure we'll hear lots about there trip when they come back.
But for the time that there gone, you get ME! Lucky you!
So back to what happened at SS this weekend. Well, instead of soup, Sous Chef and I mixed it up and made salad for everyone. (and no, nothing happened to our soup) We thought it would be a nice change, there was a fresh green salad with lettuce from,-I forget their nickname, but lets call them the gardeners, and Egg salad made by Sous Chief. We didn't made the bread, (partly because we didn't have time, and partly because we forgot how to!) but it was fresh from the fast sinking bakery(hey, look at that, I made up a new nickname!).
We also had delicious banana bran muffins made by yours truly!
Over all I think Sunday Salad was a huge success, the writer, the fix-it man and his wife(sock lady), One couple I don't know their nickname for (But they are gratefully thanked because they brought watermelon- yum!) and the neighbour and pooh Bear's friend all came over. And I think everyone of them asked us what we did wrong with our soup. (FYI We didn't make soup) And best part of all, we didn't poison anyone with out cooking! Well...I haven't seen any of them sense they left... but I'm sure they're fine. Maybe... Hopefully...
Anyway that's all for now, Pasty Chief has left the Blog!

Long day, but nice

2010-05-16T21:30:00.001-07:00

Long day here...eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches for supper. All the soup's gone. It's because I made Thai Vegetable Soup with Coconut Milk and it was so fantabulous we ate all but half a bowl, which The Southerner generously offered to eat after everyone left so we could wash the crockpot. He's good that way.

I got the recipe here. And I made it times 4 which made enough for 14 people or so. I added thinly sliced carrots and broccoli, and instead of canned mushrooms I used diced white mushrooms. SUPER! It's a pretty easy soup to make, but does take a while to cut everything up.

Oh, the dinger on the toaster oven just went off. Gotta run and make the sandwiches. Next week, the Sous Chef and The Pastry Chef are making the soup themselves (and bread, I presume?). Should be very yummy. They've come a long way since I first showed them how to grate cheese!

P.S. If you're interested in my book, it came out last Thursday in the US, this Tuesday in Canada. Click on the link on the sidebar and visit my site for more info!

Ahhh...relaxing...

2010-05-09T20:31:00.001-07:00

Today we had a nice, relaxing Sunday Soup. We had six people, including one newbie, plus us, which was fun. The soup was a lovely egg drop and spinach soup. Because it's Mother's Day, The Sous Chef didn't come, but she did come over last night and help me wash the spinach. The soup is best if it's made at the last minute, so I essentially made it just moments before everyone arrived. Cleaning all that spinach is a job though, so I appreciated her help last night.

It was nice and sunny, but it's been a cool spring so far and we haven't moved out onto the porch yet, although for the first two years, we've always been outside in May. Maybe next week.

It was such a relaxing SS, that the Fix-it Guy kept falling asleep in his chair, and the second everyone was out the door, The Southerner headed for the couch for his nap. Me? I'm too excited to nap. Why? Because not only does my book finally go on sale THIS THURSDAY, but it's already in some stores and today, someone sent me a photo of it "in the wild" as we say in publishing...in other words, for sale in a bookstore! It's the blue one, front and centre (Restoring Harmony).

Hope you have wonderful week!

Two Years and Counting!

2010-05-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of Sunday Soup! Oddly enough, even though I forgot to remind people, and I didn't even tell them that The Pastry Chef was making The Southerner a birthday cake, we had a HUGE crowd. Including us, there were 18 people at Sunday Soup yesterday.

Not only did The Pastry Chef make a beautiful checkerboard cake, but The Fleece Lady brought a wheat-free carrot and pineapple cake. I didn't get any yesterday, but there's half a piece with my name on it in the fridge. In fact, cake is about all we have in the fridge. There's the orange juice cake I made The Southerner on his actual birthday, plus a little of the two from yesterday. Life is good!

We got a few cans of soup for the food bank, but since I forgot to remind people, we didn't get many. We'll keep collecting if anyone wants to bring any next week.

I had a pretty busy week and no time to cook this weekend, so The Southerner and I had extra coffee yesterday and then we did a speed clean on the house and made Potato Leek soup just a few hours before people showed up. We can literally make that soup in ten minutes if we work together and then it only has to cook for about 30 minutes. And people love it. Thank you, Julia Child!

How busy was I this weekend? Well...I bought bread! Yes, bought it! I think that might've been the first time for SS. But it was tasty bakery bread, and local...and organic, so it was all good.

How was your week? Eat any good soup?

Remember Me?

2010-04-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

Hi All.
I'm betting you thought I fell into a vat of my own soup and disappeared, but that'd be silly because I'm a VEGETARIAN! I'd never fall into the soup or I'd be violating the most basic rule of Sunday Soup!

After a bit of gentle nudging (Anne) and some not so gentle kicks in the butt (Sous Chef), I am finally back to update SS! It's been an exciting few weeks since I posted too. Last week was my birthday and The Sous Chef made me a most delicious ice cream cake ALL BY HERSELF! She did borrow my spring form pan, but other than that, she did it alone!

The buttercream frosting was my favourite part. Why? Because the night before she made the cake, she was over here cooking with me and this is how our conversation went.

Sous Chef: I'm a little worried about the frosting.
Me: Why?
SC: Because I've never made frosting before.
Me: You didn't frost the other cakes you made?
SC: Well, yeah...but I got it out of a can.( BIG SIGH) I can't do that for you.
Me: (Evil laughter!) That's right, baby! And don't even try it.

So she made the frosting from scratch. And get this, she remembered I liked candied pecans, but there weren't any at the grocery store, so she got online and found a recipe and made them herself!!! I was so proud! And they were totally yummy.

In other news, I was supposed to help The Sous Chef make soup for the volunteers at The Commons one Saturday morning, but my phone got unplugged (it was an accident, I swear) and she ended up making soup for twenty people ALL BY HERSELF. And I got there just in time to eat it and it was DELICIOUS. You do realize what this means, right? It means that I taught someone who thought grated cheese got that way by buying it in a bag and frosting came in a can how to cook!!!!

Anyway, enough about TSC, who wasn't even here today, but did come last night and chop a LOT of broccoli for the Broccoli Almond soup. This is a yummy and delish soup. However, we won't be having it often because I almost passed out at the checkout when my tiny bag of bulk blanched almonds cost $12.47!!!

The Southerner and I are cutting out butter for the most part and so we've been offering up different things (besides the obvious one, soup) to go with the bread. Today I had a homemade hummus and also some blackberry-blueberry-chipotle sauce (which I think only The Fix-it Guy ate). It's really quite tasty though, so as The Southerner says whenever someone says, "Oh, I don't really like X," more for me!

Even though I try not to talk about my job/book here too much, I do have to point out that since my last post, my website has received an all new facelift and you can watch the book trailer and hear the music from the book, performed by The Southerner and The Fiddler.

I'll try to do better on updates, but you never know! I did miss you all though. Oh, oh! I can't forget, this is really important and I forgot to remind everyone who came today...Next weekend is the Second Anniversary of Sunday Soup! Two whole years! And what that means is that we will be doing our annual "soup drive for PHC." If you come to Sunday Soup, please bring canned soup donations for the foodbank and we will deliver them. Last year, we had around 25 cans. I think we can do better this year, don't you? See you then!

2010-03-14T19:48:00.001-07:00

Tonight we had my favourite soup. A red lentil dal (that turns yellow when you cook it) and scallion pancakes. So yummy, I'm going to go have some more.

If I had spring allergies, they would probably make me too tired to write anything else, but I don't have them because I REFUSE to have them. So I'm just too tired to write more for no reason. Have a good week!

Two For One

2010-03-07T16:10:00.000-08:00

Even though I haven't been posting much on this blog, I do mean to at least get the menu up every week! But last week, I totally slacked off.

The Fix-it Guy gave me a big bag of garlic from his garden and requested garlic soup. I made a roasted garlic and roasted potato soup, which was pretty good. The Southerner said, and I quote, "It tastes like dirt...or maybe just smells like dirt. That's why I like it." Ummm...okay...

Interestingly enough, The Fix-it Guy did not actually come to SS and so I sent him his in jars on Tuesday and he didn't even like it. So, that's the last request I'm taking from him. :-)

I also made a buttermilk quick bread which was excellent, and especially good later in the week when I turned it into this wine-cheese-egg bake dish. Oh, yum!

It's now just after four, and no one's here yet, so I'll just quickly post about today's soup. It is that time of year when the freezer needed to be inventoried and we have to start eating everything from last summer that we haven't (I know food guides say stuff loses it's flavour after 3 months, but I think that's just some organized food propaganda because we're eating lots of stuff from the garden still and it's fantastic). Anyway, I had a LOT of zucchini still from that one plant so last night the Sous Chef and I made a very nice curry zucchini soup with sour cream. I forgot to make the bread before bed, so today I made two loaves of whole-grain sunflower bread (made with whole wheat flour and whole grain cereal). It's about as hippie as it sounds, but it's actually quite tasty and I'm already thinking about breakfast tomorrow - toast with local honey (when I say local, I mean LOCAL, as in just down the street!).

So there you go, two SS in one, and I even rambled on a bit! My Grandma will be pleased as she's been missing her SS update. She'll be even more pleased to hear that since I'll be coming to visit, I'm going to start filling her soup containers again and I'll be bringing lots of soup to her!

Have a great week everyone!
P.S. The Fix-it Guy just showed up and says it's snowing! It hasn't snowed all winter! I think he's imagining it though. All I see is rain.

Happy Birthday to the Pastry Chef

2010-02-21T19:47:00.000-08:00

This week is the Pastry Chef's birthday, so her sister, The Sous Chef came over on Friday night and we made a fabulous corn chowder. This morning, at the crack of dawn (okay, 9:30am), the Sous Chef came over again, and we made this cake!

It's The Pastry Chef's Sweet Sixteen birthday and she had informed me on numerous occasions that the cake had better be special and NOT vanilla, like The Sous Chef wanted. So while this cake might look like vanilla (we tricked her), it was actually a three layer Red Velvet Cake with butter cream frosting in the shape of a heart with sprinkles. Special enough? She thought so!

Happy Birthday, Pastry Chef!

Happy Chinese New Year!

2010-02-14T19:08:00.000-08:00

So today just happens to be the Chinese New Year, which is very fitting because on Friday I found out that my publisher sold the rights to my book, Restoring Harmony, to CHINA! That's right, my book is coming out in China. Pretty cool, eh?

To celebrate, I made Hot and Sour Soup and Scallion Pancakes. It was all pretty yummy. Although, scallion pancakes for a crowd takes quite a bit of time. For the soup, I used a mixture of a couple of different recipes. And for the pancakes, I doubled this recipe. Enjoy!

P.S. Last week we had vegetable soup and bread and an obligation right after SS, which is why I didn't post anything at all. Sorry!

Sorry folks...

2010-01-31T19:46:00.001-08:00

All I can manage today is the menu:
Tomato Orange Soup
The Southerner's Famous Cornbread

Yum.

24 January 2010

2010-01-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

Potato Leek Soup
Buttermilk biscuits with chives and cheese

Sunday Soup ended early so we could go to the island's Concert for Haiti. Four hundred generous people and a lot of volunteers raised $14,000 , plus the silent auction proceeds (figures not available yet) in one evening.

We live on an island. It could be us. But it wasn't, so we will give, and give, and give. And the Canadian government will match our efforts.

Blessings to you all.

A Blog Break

2010-01-17T20:04:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,
Well...Sunday Soup is still going strong. We've had several new guests over the last few months, and both The Sous Chef and The Pastry Chef are coming right along in the kitchen and making wonderful things to eat.

However...

Truth be told, I'm getting a little burnt out on this blog. I don't really know what to write each week anymore. I seem to be using all my words to write my new book too, which makes it hard to be creative here. So...I hope you will bear with me while I take a break from blogging. I will still check in each week with a menu update, but that's about it. I know that some of you who live off island like to catch up on what's going on here, but after almost two years, I just need a bit of a blogging break.

So, that said, the soup today was Pumpkin and Delicata squash with Sage and Maple Syrup. There were two kinds of bread: Challah and a whole wheat. Much thanks to The Pastry Chef for helping to make the soup and bringing wonderful cookies today!

Have a great week, everyone! And thanks for being so understanding.

Vacation

2010-01-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

I know...I know...I'm letting all y'all down, but I really need a vacation from blogging this week because my deadline for my new book is pressing upon me (it's a good thing, but it takes all the words I have right now).

Just know that we had SS, it was fun, we missed you if you weren't there, and the soup was...oh, man...I can't even remember. No, wait! I do. Onion with cheesy toast.

See you next week!

Is Today Sunday?

2010-01-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

The Sous Chef has bronchitis. Don't worry, she was banned from the kitchen and she's gone back to University where she can infect a lot more people than we get at SS (I know...I know...she's not contagious anymore...that was a joke, SC!)

The Pastry Chef came over though, on Friday night, and we made Chunky Garden Vegetable Soup. Guess where we got the veggies? Yep! The Southerner grew them. You knew that already, though, didn't you?

The Pastry Chef didn't actually come over to make soup, she came over to learn to make bread. You see, for holiday break homework, she was supposed to do a random act of kindness and so she asked me to teach her to make her bread and then she took the loaf of bread with her on a walk the next morning and gave it to the first stranger she met! How sweet was that? She met a fellow dog walker and handed it off, and because we live in a small community, the guy was just glad to get it, not worried about being poisoned or anything! Yay, small communities! And yay Pastry Chef!

Anyway, she ended up helping me make the soup, which is why it is pretty surprising that she did not show up today. I am sorry to say that The Pastry Chef has had entirely TOO MUCH TIME OFF FROM SCHOOL because she LOST TRACK OF THE DAYS and did not realize today was Sunday until I called her afterward to ask where she was!

Luckily for her, despite a huge crowd, and the fact that The Fleece Lady declared this "the best vegetable soup ever" there was ONE bowl left and I saved it for The Pastry Chef.

We had a lot of guests tonight, some new, some regulars. I'd love to be clever and give all the new guests nicknames, but basically I'm just too lazy...I mean, tired. We had a long, but wonderful weekend of brunches, and music and general frivolity. And now, I'm going to relax a bit with The Southerner. Y'all come back, ya hear?

A Sweet Time

2009-12-27T18:43:00.000-08:00

Those of you who missed today are probably going to regret it when I tell you that we had a whole table full of yummy sweets! There were vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, chocolate pine bark, butter cookies with icing, butter cookies with organic chocolate, and lovely mince pies! Plus The Fleece Lady's dip and chips, oh, and soup. Yep. There was soup too.

It was an original soup, and while The Southerner thought I missed his comment about where the recipe came from, I did not!

The Fleece Lady: Oh, it's original? I was wondering what book she got it out of.
The Southerner: She got it out of the Book of Desperation.
Haha!

He said this because as of nine o'clock last night, I really didn't know what I was going to make for today. So, here's what I did. I had made a big pot of baked beans for us - not traditional ones, but white and pinto with onions, sweet curry, coconut milk and ginger. They were lovely...so lovely, that I decided to use them as a base for my totally original soup. What I did, was make a pot of vegetable stock, thin the beans down with it, puree it, and then cooked another pound of pintos, added them with sauteed celery and carrot, some curry, and another can of coconut milk. Voila. Bean Soup with Sweet Curry & Coconut. Yum! Who needs a cook book, I ask you?

It was a quiet Sunday Soup today. The Sous Chef dropped off the Pastry Chef and took her soup to go because she's poorly. Then Roxy Steve came by (their dad) and had some soup and a visit. Also The Neighbour came along with The Fix-it Guy & The Fleece Lady. They brought the mince pies, so instead of putting a dent in our hoard of baked goods, we actually increased our stash! I'm sure that The Southerner and I can work on that though and nothing will go to waste...just waists.

Anyway, it was a nice, warm, candlelit, final Sunday Soup of 2009, and from us to you, Happy Holidays and see ya in 2010!

Soup to Live On

2009-12-20T20:27:00.000-08:00

The Fix-it guys said of today's soup, "You could live on this stuff." It's possible. It had a lot of good stuff in it. Actually, a person (not The Southerner as he thinks soup is an appetizer) could probably live on most good vegetable soups with some grains and legumes thrown in.

Today's soup was Miso with Cabbage and Root Vegetables. I didn't actually have any of the soup. I don't like Miso. But I heard it was really good, and judging by how much of it is gone, I'd say people liked it. I know Miso's supposed to be really good for you, but I just don't like the flavour. Why make it, you ask? Well, the truth is, I've made a lot of soups and I had all the stuff and other people like Miso, so why not?

This weekend's been a bit crazy so I didn't actually have time to make soup in advance, which was another good reason to make this one. Apparently cabbage is best if you eat it soon after you cook it, and this soup only needed to cook for twenty minutes (the work was in all the dicing, chopping, and sauteeing), so I made it around 2pm today. I generally make the soup on Friday night or Saturday. The only other times I've made it on Sunday was when I burned the soup, and when I made a horribly disgusting soup that even The Southerner wouldn't eat!

All in all, it was another lovely SS. We did the candlelight thing again, and The Writer brought another fantastic deep dish apple pie (don't tell him how good it was though because we're trying to convince him that he needs to keep practicing).

There is one thing I want to add to today's post. I know that a lot of you who read this are cooks yourselves and handle a lot of the food you eat. And even those of you who don't cook, all definitely eat. So when you sit down to have your next meal, have a good look at it and remember the farmer who grew it.

Today's Sunday Soup
is dedicated to our dear friend,
Farmer Ralph.
You will be missed.

Hearty Soup & Candlelight

2009-12-13T18:36:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, the power went out right as SS began and we had a lovely candlelight evening. It was such a success that tonight we turned the lights low before people arrived and lit candles again. Everyone seemed to enjoy it!

The Sous Chef is busy with exams this week, so alas she had to eat cafeteria food this weekend and we missed her. However, it was an excellent opportunity for Pastry Chef (aka Younger Sister) to come over and pinch hit in the kitchen. We made a mighty fabulous hearty vegetable chowder from this recipe (subbing homemade veggie stock for the chicken stock) using local, organic veggies and sage right from my windowsill. It was yummy! The bread was the usual, but no one complained!

The Neighbour was out sick with a cold, but we didn't let The Fix-it Guy go over and drag her to SS anyway. She was missed though. All in all, a sort of nice, chatty, candlelit night. Snow in the forecast, so I better go blow those candles out now and save 'em in case we really need them.

Have a great week! Eat well.

So much music!

2009-12-06T20:54:00.001-08:00

This is going to be short and sweet.
Fantastic weekend.
Lots of music.
The Southerner, The Irish One, The Musician, The Fix-it Guy, The Fiddler, Kazoo Girl, and Clarinet Guy played two benefit concerts for The Commons, raising over $1200! Because of this, our house was hoppin' this weekend. We had musicians and guests going in and out for the last two days, more food than we could possibly put away (although we made a gallant effort), and endless, wonderful music.

The Neighbour hosted for the first hour while the second concert wrapped up (the first one sold out before the posters were even up!) and the soup was white bean, spinach, & tomato (you can find the recipe in the archives, I made it last December...the 23rd, or so) and it was yummy.

So tired...must rest...but not until I share one last bit of FANTASTIC NEWS!

My publisher just offered me a contract on a new book!!!! Read all about it here!

Eat well...more next week! Thanks to everyone who helped support The Commons this weekend!

Not tonight, I have a headache...

2009-11-29T21:46:00.000-08:00

I tried to get out of blogging by asking The Sous Chef to blog for me because I've had a headache since yesterday. She laughed. Apparently she has no sympathy for me because I told her that if she really did get food poisoning this past week from eating at the golden arches, well, that's what she gets for eating there. She didn't like that much, so here I am blogging. She did help with the dishes though...she loaded all the dirty spoons into the dishwasher!

I also tried to get The Southerner to blog, but he's too busy practicing all the cool stuff he's going to play next weekend at his third annual benefit gig, Concert For The Commons (which, by the way, is sold out, but it is probable a Sunday show will be added so if you live on the island and you want a second show to happen, add your name to the waiting list at Artworks). A house full of music is lovely though, so I'm not complaining.

We had a very nice, rather quiet evening. The power stayed on the whole time, and the soup was a hit. Someone asked what it was called and I said, "What I had in the fridge soup." It's true. Last night at nine o'clock, I still didn't know what I was going to make, so I looked in the fridge. I made a very nice soup out of leeks, a parsnip (grown by The Farmers), carrots, and potatoes (grown by The Southerner) and some seasonings. I basically simmered it all in water, removed half the vegetables, pureed the rest, put the veggies back in, and seasoned it all with salt and pepper and a secret spice (okay, Penzey's ranch dressing mix).

And that's about it here! Have a great week and eat well. Oh, and if there is a second show, never fear, Sunday Soup will go on as scheduled...The Neighbour will hold the fort down until we get back around 5pm.

All right...who turned out the lights?

2009-11-22T20:15:00.000-08:00

The soup was bubbling in the pot, the biscuits were hot out of the oven, and luckily The Southerner had a roarin' good fire going in the woodstove because The Crowd was still coming through the doors when the power went out. Our first Blackout Sunday Soup! How exciting.

We soon discovered that while we're well stocked with candles, we're lacking in holders. But we made do with some old dishes and before we knew it, The Fix-it Guy was dishing up Borscht for everyone and even serving it to them around the table (it's usually serve-yourself)!

Just about the time that we were going to send out a search party for The Neighbour, she came hobbling in...turns out she had her knee surgery a bit early, but didn't tell any of us because she didn't want to bother us! Can you believe it? Tomorrow we are banding together to stock her house with kindling, food, and good books and The Southerner made sure she got home okay tonight. He was going to drive her, but they decided it would take three times as long to go down our long driveway, around the block, and into her driveway rather than just walk through our backyards. Plus she would've had to climb into the truck.

It was a lovely candlelit Sunday Soup and the power just came on a few minutes ago, well after everyone had left and we'd heated our vegetable curry on the woodstove (and I made rice which was actually better than on the regular stove!) and eaten it. I'd even cleaned up by candlelight while The Southerner practiced guitar for his upcoming gig. You really should go to it on December 5th, if you're on the island. It's going to be a cavalcade of stars - The Fix-it Guy, The Fiddler, The Irish One, The Musician, and others are going to join The Southerner all in a benefit for the Commons!

Oh, and yes...I do realize I let everyone down by not posting last week. The Sous Chef pointed this out several times, which caused me to suggest that perhaps The Sous Chef should take over the blog, since that seems like a perfect job for a sous chef. But as she pointed out, she doesn't know how to use capital letters in emails so she probably wouldn't in a blog post which would drive me INSANE. Oh, wait... what I meant to say is that she pointed out that while she often helps cook she is rarely actually present for SS.

Anyway, while I did not post last week, I will tell you that we had Chocolate Chili and bread and a very special guest. The Poetess came all the way from Tennessee to visit for a week, and also to attend the poetry festival. Oh, and to teach a wonderful Yoga For Writers workshop. So I'm sorry I didn't blog, but I was just worn out from all the fun we had running around, showing her the island!

Today's soup was borscht. I made it for three reasons. The first two are because The Fix-it Guy and The Musician have been requesting it for months. The third reason is because The Farmers gave me the beets, the greens, the dill, and the recipe, so what could I say, "Ummm...thanks, but I hate beets?" No. My mother raised me to have more manners than that. So on Friday night, The Sous Chef and I made the soup and guess what? It was really good. And everyone loved it. Even The Southerner ate some and he has a "No meat, no beet" food policy. I still am not a big fan of beets, but I could definitely make this again next year and be happy about it.

So...until next week...Eat Well.

vacation?

2009-11-18T19:28:00.001-08:00

I know I never posted this week. I'll double up with great stuff next week.

Nice & Relaxed

2009-11-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

Tonight's SS was nice and relaxed. We had the group of regulars and there wasn't any ukulele practice so it was quiet (we loved the uke practice, don't get me wrong, y'all come back!). I've been reading the Betsy-Tacy books lately, and as you know, Sunday Soup got started because of them (if you don't know the story, look to the left hand side of this blog). In the book, all Betsy's friends are affectionately called The Crowd. I think that's what I'm going to start calling the regulars.

Today, we had The Crowd in for mushroom, lentil, tomato soup. It was a yummy soup...in fact, I'm eating a bowl now and The Southerner ate about four bowls so I didn't even have to cook him dinner after everyone left. AND he did the dishes. He's a keeper.

That's about it for today. Oh, except this news! Late last week, I received the galleys or ARCs (advance reading copies) of my book! These look like a paperback version of my book, but they're uncorrected - meaning, I've made some changes since they went to print. Still, they're way cool! They are for reviewers and booksellers, but my publisher gave me a few, which leads me to this story: You're probably wondering if the Sous Chef helped make this soup. She did not. She came over to make it, but...this is what she did instead!

The Best

2009-11-01T19:49:00.000-08:00

If you were at Sunday Soup tonight, you might have thought it was awards night. Through much discussion, it was determined that we apparently had the best of everything tonight.

The pumpkin-peach soup was declared The Best Soup Ever by The Neighbour.
The Writer's apple pie was crowned The Best Apple Pie So Far (it was only given the "so far" award because we hope he'll keep trying to surpass it so we can test it for him).
The seed & fennel bread was declared The Best Bread in Recent Memory by many.
The Fleece Lady's artichoke dip was deemed the very yummiest, bestest ever, please-bring-again every week by me, The Chef. Oh, yum! I don't even need dinner now.

I think we also should give an award for The Best Crowd for a non-party Sunday Soup. There were simply zillions of us! Way more than I can count. And just as the first wave was putting on coats to leave, a bunch more people arrived with ukuleles and wine and the party got going all over again.

There is one more prize to give out though. It is for Best Hair.

The Southerner models The Fleece Lady's Halloween wig.

Free cookies!

2009-10-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

The island's poetry society is having their big festival in a few weeks and there's going to be a great raffle. While I leave most of the volunteering to The Southerner (he does enough for about three or four people, so I'm covered), I have signed up to sell the raffle tickets. My plan was to hit up all the SS attendees by bribing them with food. It sort of worked...today there were free cookies if you bought a ticket, and so everyone did, and then I gave them extra cookies too.

If you live here on the island, and you buy your raffle tickets from me, I'm not above giving you an extra incentive too. Here's what you can get in ADDITION to the ticket and the possibility of winning many fabulous prizes, like free firewood, nights in a B&B, and ferry travel: cookies, bread, butterscotch apple bread pudding, four quarts of soup & a loaf of bread, or dinner for two fixed by me right in my very own kitchen!

Anyway, aside from the hard sell on the raffle tickets, we had a nice time. The soup was Tortilla Soup, which is pretty much a tomato based soup with black beans served over tortilla chips with cheese. The Sous Chef came over on Friday night to help me make it since I had plans yesterday. A very popular soup! In fact, so popular, it might be gone.

The Southerner got the fire roaring again, so it was toasty warm and everyone filled up with cookies and tea and the conversation was long, languid, and low-key. As I write this, a pot of vegetables are roasting in the oven for supper, the fire is crackling, the cats are melted into the furniture, and the rain is drumming on the roof. A very satisfying end to a lovely Sunday Soup.

Until next week...eat well, and don't forget to bring your money for raffle tickets!

The Best of Both Worlds

2009-10-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, when the Sous Chef, The Southerner, and I tasted the eight bean soup, The Southerner said, "It's so good! Maybe no one will come and we'll get to eat it all!" He didn't really mean it, but what did happen was we had a bunch of people stop by for the social bit and not the soup (they were too full from other events or in a hurry) and so we ended up with quite a lot of leftovers AND we got to see all our friends. The best of both worlds...especially if you're The Southerner!

The Fix-it Guy did drop in briefly with a bunch of musicians who were here playing a gig with him and they all had soup and bread and crackers. They had a ferry to catch, so they had to eat fast. They loved the bread, but the crackers were a big hit too. Yes. Crackers that The Sous Chef and I made yesterday. We had so much fun mixing and matching flours, spices, cheese, and herbs that we made about six batches, I think. There was cornmeal and aleppo pepper, fresh garlic with whole wheat flour and Parmesan cheese, and many more combos. Yum!

Wild Iris brought us flowers, but couldn't stay. The Irish One brought us lovely apples from her tree, and just visited...others dropped by for a bowl of soup or a chat. It was, all in all, a very nice Sunday Soup. And even though the last visitor left almost an hour ago, there's still fifteen minutes, so who knows...maybe someone else will show up and it will turn out I'm writing prematurely (which is better than last week when I forgot!).

I wanted to share something really cool with you though. As you may or may not know, Sunday Soup was originally inspired by the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. The publisher of the book series has just re-released the high school books and to help spread the word and celebrate, Betsy-Tacy lovers around the world are blogging about the books and how they affected their lives. I get to be part of the fun. Tomorrow (Monday, October 19th), there will be a special blog post on my writer website all about Sunday Soup and Betsy. I hope you'll drop by to read it.

And in the meantime, have a great week and eat lots of soup. See y'all next Sunday!

I was just too full to write!

2009-10-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention that I am a total slacker. Although, it was put much nicer than that! The truth is that I forgot to post because I was too full of Thanksgiving dinner. Canadian Thanksgiving was last weekend and so Sunday Soup was a quiet affair. In fact, only The Neighbour and The Real Estate Agent came. We had a lovely time though and the soup was good. My standard quick-no-fail soup - Potato Leek. The potatoes were from The Southerner's garden. Yummmm...If you've never had fresh from the farm/garden potatoes, I suggest you start growing your own. They are totally different than potatoes you buy in the store. For one thing, they're really hard. For another, when you cut into them, they are crisp and juicy like an apple. Amazing. And the taste is extraordinary. Anyway...

After the guests left, The Southerner and I had a fantastic meal that I'd mostly prepared ahead of time. You can read all about it here, if you want.

So to those of you who were here, and all of you that we missed, or who live far away, I just want to say that we count you among our many blessings that we are thankful for.

The Luckiest Girl in the World! Me!

2009-10-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today I took a moment to look around our living room and kitchen during Sunday Soup and I was truly stunned by our blessings. Two years ago, The Southerner and I moved here and didn't know anyone. Today our house overflowed with friendship, food, love, and laughter. And as if that wasn't great enough, I now have a three piece jazz band playing in my living room. Everyone else has gone home, but the trio's just getting started - oh, wait...apparently we're losing the horn player right after this song. Oh, well, a handful of songs is still pretty great. Not everyone has a jazz guitar, trombone, and upright bass concert all to themselves! And apparently, neither do I for much longer. But I do have a die-hard bass player (The Fix-it Guy) and the guitar/singer (The Southerner) for more music!

The potluck was a great success and I learned something very important. If you make two soups, and you only make a small batch of one of them, that is the one that everyone will love! Not that they turned up their noses at my original recipe squash, ginger, and apple cider soup, but truly the Chocolate Chili was the sure winner. It went so fast I had to hide the empty crockpot so that the latecomers wouldn't know they'd missed it. Yes, that's right. Chocolate Chili. The recipe came from How to Cook Practically Everything Vegetarian. Of course, I made a few adjustments. I added a chipotle pepper and some adobo sauce to give it a kick. And I didn't have any plain dark chocolate so I added orange dark chocolate. It was made with black beans, onions, tomatoes, water and seasonings. Yum.

The Crowd was so big that I can't name everyone, so I won't name anyone. There were several people who had never come before either, so it was nice to finally get them here. I hope they'll all come back. This was truly a wonderful day and The Southerner and I are so happy to be part of this community. Thank you for having us. And come back next week!

P.S. The Sous Chef had to go to a horse show this weekend, so she didn't come for a cooking lesson, but she did send me this picture of our cannolis from last week. She took it on her phone, so it's sideways. You'll just have to turn your head (or your computer). The dough is wrapped around wooden dowels that we had cut at the building supply store and then sanded ourselves (thank you internet for the tip!). By the way, The Southerner LOVED them! But like he said, "Cannolis...what's not to love?"

Lots of sugar & hot oil

2009-09-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

Instead of making soup on Saturday, The Sous Chef and I made cannoli. This experience has taught me quite a few things. First off, when The Sous Chef says something like, "You can't make cannoli in this part of the world. They can only make it in Europe!" I should probably check the recipe before saying, "Of course you can." While it's true that you can make cannoli at home, and we did, it's a heck of a lot of work. Next time she picks something crazy like that to make, I'm going to say, "You're right. You can't make that unless you're Italian (or Belgian, which is where she had it)."

Another thing I learned is do not allow The Sous Chef to schedule a horseback ride on the same afternoon you're making something complicated or you will find yourself standing over a pan of hot oil ALL ALONE frying up cannoli after cannoli and then making the soup while you're half asleep. Still, it was fun and I learned to deep-fry (which is not necessarily a good thing for my health, as I followed the cannoli frying with homemade onion rings!).

The soup was very yummy. At least I think it was, but I have a lot left so I'm not sure if everyone else agreed. I think that The Writer's tempting apple pie kept them from having seconds of soup. It's a minestrone and almost everything in it came from our garden! The Southerner did good this year! The few veggies that weren't from our garden came from The Farmers, so it was all organic goodness. Here's what was in it: water, tomatoes, onions, leeks, potatoes, green beans, zucchini (of course), broad beans, carrots, rosemary, salt & pepper, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and alphabet pasta. Delish! Just throw it all in a pot (cheese at the end and the pasta separately), and it's sooo good!

I used the leftover whey (from the homemade ricotta that I made for the cannoli) in the bread and I think it gave it a tiny sweetness. You don't taste it a lot in the bread, but when I made toast, it was noticeably crispier. Very nice.

We had two special guests and one Missing Person yesterday. My Aunt and Uncle came up from Washington State and spent the day with me touring the island, and then staying for Sunday Soup. It was great fun! I say, "with me" because the MP was The Southerner. He had to do a bit of travelling this weekend, but I saved him some cannoli, so while he missed our fun company, he'll still get the food.

By the way, next week is a special Sunday Soup. It is our We're so Happy We Live On This Island Second Annual Potluck. So if you live here, do drop by and help us celebrate our second anniversary living in Canada and here on the Island. And while I usually say, "Oh, don't bring anything" this is your chance. It will be during our regular SS time, so make sure you book us into your leisurely island schedule!

Monday

2009-09-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

Hi All. Too tired to post tonight, but will update on Monday. I even put it on my schedule so I won't forget. See you then.

We have a winner - 3 winners actually!

2009-09-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

Today was Fall Fair here on the island, so instead of making the soup yesterday together, The Sous Chef & I baked our entries for the fair competition (I made the soup earlier). The Sous Chef entered with these white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, although, after much discussion, we made secret changes to the recipe, so yours probably won't be quite as good as hers. I have to say, they were DELICIOUS (notice how I'm using the past tense). And she won the First Place Blue Ribbon in the cookie category. Congratulations to one of my star pupils!

I made chocolate zucchini muffins and doctored them up with melted orange chocolate and sugar and passed them off as cupcakes since there wasn't a muffin category. I won first place too. Yeah, we're that good here!

The Pastry Chef (formerly Little Sister), baked her cookies on her own and took the Second Place Red Ribbon. There was some dispute between SC and PC regarding my help. Was it unfair that I helped Sous Chef and that she sabotaged my offer to help Pastry Chef by not passing on the message? That's an argument I'm not getting into. I told Pastry Chef that I was at her disposal next year though. And a big congratulations to her too on her red ribbon. She's come a long way baby since making those notorious tomato soup cookies.

Anyway, there I was, feeling all proud of The Pastry Chef for making these cookies all on her own. Yay, her! At least, I felt proud and happy UNTIL she threw the spatula down with this challenge! She looked at me, her eyes bright, her smile confident, "Next year, if they have a muffin category, I will beat you with my most awesome blueberry muffins."

Can you believe that? Well, I have news for the Pastry Chef! I make the killerest oatmeal buttermilk blackberry muffins that you could ever hope to sink your teeth into. I say to you, Pastry Chef, if you think your muffins are so good, why wait until next year? Are you afraid of my muffins? Or are you hoping I'm gonna forget? Ha! We are having the Second Annual Sunday Soup potluck on October 4th, and I say put your muffins where your mouth is, Little Miss Pastry Chef! The Island Bake-off is on! And you too, Sous Chef...let's bake!

Okay...relax...breathe...

Anyway, the soup today was a red lentil dal soup that I made from this recipe. I added some very thinly sliced sauteed onions, cilantro, and lots of lemon slices and lemon juice. The Fix-it Guy declared it my best soup ever. I really, really liked it myself. I've been trying to duplicate a soup like my favourite restaurant, The India Oven, in Portland, Oregon makes (sadly, last time I went there they were out of business) and this is pretty darn close. Warning:

P.S. Clicking on the Fall Fair link in the first sentence will take you to pics that The Southerner took today. Enjoy!

I wasn't being anti-social..I was talking shop!

2009-09-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

I suppose I could be accused of being anti-social today since most everyone spent SS on the porch and I sat at the kitchen table inside with The Sisters. Although, I do need a new nickname for Younger Sister because Older Sister has had a change to Sous Chef. I think Younger Sister will hereafter be called Pastry Chef, since that's her specialty (or at least, her main interest!).

The three of us were scouring cookbooks and searching the internet for recipes. The Pastry Chef wants to learn to make apple strudel. We found a recipe to try here, but if you have one you love, please send it on! Although The Sous Chef is primarily learning to cook soup, we are also expanding her lessons to include one other thing per week. Yesterday she made zucchini bread. I tried to give her all the credit, but she did protest and say that I added the vanilla. I guess it's important to give credit where credit is due. Still, I think there are two reasons this batch turned out particularly well. The first is of course, that she made it. The second is that I ran out of white sugar, so we did 1 cup of white and 1/2 cup of brown. It made the bread lighter than ever. I will make it that way from now on.

For this week, we made Cauliflower Soup from this recipe by Rachel Ray (FYI, I think the roux is unnecessary and won't bother next time). The Sous Chef is at a slight disadvantage in that she has a chronic pain issue in her right arm and she's right handed. She is not supposed to "chop too much" according to her physical therapist, which is a bit of a problem since soup basically consists of chopping a lot of things and throwing them into a pot. What we did yesterday was I chopped most of everything, and then left 2 stalks of celery, one head of cauliflower (out of six), and an onion and then I gave her the lesson on how to chop, core and dice and she practiced on those things. That way she got the idea, but didn't overwork her arm.

We had a bit of a scare though. I was taking a phone call from The Fleece Lady who was calling to make sure I was going to save her some soup since she was going to miss SS, and The Sous Chef was whisking the eggs, oil, and sugar for the zucchini bread. Much to my surprise, she thought she was mixing something to go into the cauliflower soup! Luckily, she realized this was probably not true before I even hung up. Whew! Julia Child said one should never admit one's mistake, just serve the food with a smile, but Cauliflower and Scrambled Egg Soup would probably be a hard sell, even to the hungry SS crowd!

I did feel it was necessary to tell The Sous Chef that if she had added the eggy-oily-sugary mixture, I would've been forced to demote her to dishwasher. I'm glad I didn't have to, but now that I think about it, the idea of having a dishwasher is very appealing! Hmmm...I wonder how The Southerner feels about a nickname change?

Anyway, SS was lots of fun in the kitchen today, and I assume it was fun outside too since no one got thrown off the deck and everyone did come in to say "See you next week." They looked well-fed and happy, even if we did eat all the zucchini bread ourselves. They'll never know!

Monumental SS - in so many ways

2009-09-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

Today was a monumental SS. Where to start, where to start...

First off, it's raining. This is the first real rain we've had since last spring and it was the first SS we sat inside since forever. It was nice though. Cozy. And we had a great crowd that spilled over into the living room (which actually happens if there's more than four people here since we have a tiny kitchen).

Second, The Writer showed up and he quite seriously could be renamed, "The Baker" because he made the most fabulous apple pie I've ever had. And not only that, but I snagged a piece for later too. Hey, he needed to take his plate home. I was helping him out. The Southerner got an extra piece too and I just want to say right here that the bigger pieces is MINE. You had your shot and you were polite. Haha. Doesn't always pay to be a polite southerner, does it?

Third, I now have an assistant! As I've mentioned here before, there are The Sisters who come somewhat regularly and I am teaching them how to cook. As of yesterday, The Older Sister has officially been renamed The Sous Chef. Yes, it's true. She and I now have a standing date for 2pm on Saturdays to make the soup. This means that I can no longer decide at 8pm on Saturday what the soup will be. I am being forced to be prepared. That's a good thing though!

Yesterday The Sous Chef came over and we made a magnificent (I can say that because I can direct all praise at The Sous Chef) yellow zucchini soup with fresh rosemary. It is outstanding. And I got the recipe here. The Sous Chef did two all-important jobs. First of all, she provided the inspiration for the soup by presenting me with two of the largest yellow zucchinis I have ever seen. Think the size of Santa's thigh after Christmas. Seriously. Huge. The second thing she did was she peeled the potatoes. As you may remember (or not), while I can eat potatoes, I am highly allergic to the peelings and The Southerner always has to deal with the potatoes. Now The Sous Chef will be taking over that all important job. And her horse gets the peelings, so everyone wins.

I want to add that thanks to The Sous Chef's zucchini generosity, I also made zucchini cookies, zucchini bread, zucchini fritters, and froze 18 cups of shredded zucchini in the last 48 hours.

Welcome Sous Chef! I look forward to making you do all the grunt labour, I mean...working with you.

We had a great crowd, including Wild Iris who wore the birthday sash, The Neighbour, The Fix-it Guy, The Fleece Lady, a newcomer, and The Writer's Lovely Wife (I know last time I said I'd come up with a better nickname for her, but I haven't done it yet). Also, there was someone else who has a nickname that I can't remember...You do know what that means, don't you? No, it does not mean I'm getting old and my memory is going. It means we are super blessed to have so many friends.

Lastly, and this is exciting news...we have a new addition to our family! No, I haven't been keeping anything from y'all for the last nine months. We have a new kitty. Her name is Marley (as in, Bob) and she joined us two weeks ago (she needed a home and we needed a long haired black cat to complement our short haired white one - yes, we're nuts!), but today she really, truly became part of our little group. She did this in two ways. We let her outside for the first time ever and she came back! She likes us. She really, really likes us. And the fact that I know she was gone for exactly 70 minutes does not mean I was worried or anything. Okay...I was a little worried since she shot right off into the woods and was gone instantly. But the point is, she came back. And then she came to Sunday Soup and met everyone, which makes her officially part of the community. So all in all, a very monumental SS.

2009-08-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today is our 5th wedding anniversary, so The Southerner and I pulled out all the stops. There was butter soup (also known as tomato-orange, but really...if you list the ingredients by volume, you should also call it what it is), cornbread muffins, and fresh peach cobbler with real whipped cream. Can you feel your arteries hardening as you read this?

It was lovely and sunny, but not too warm. The Brits have gone back to the UK for a spell and so last night they came over for bit of farewell supper. Even though they know us well, and are our good friends, we felt it necessary to clean the house, which actually turned out great because today all we had to do was lounge around! They will be missed though, and we look forward to their imminent return.

I'm really having troulbe (sic) writing this post because quite honestly, I'm drifting off to sleep. The laptop is warm in my lap, the big blue chair is so comfy, and we just had a wonderful dinner of leftover homemade pizza, leftover alfreddo, and leftover salad (now you know why it was so wonderful...all I had to do was heat it up), so I'm full and happy. And dozy...zzzz.

Oh, wait. What was I saying? Sunday Soup...that's right. We had a nice big group, and The Irish One brought some guests so there were new people here too. The Fix-it Guy and The Fleece Lady did not make it because they had to go drink margaritas at someone else's house, er...had another social obligation. But I saved them soup because that's just the kind of hostess I am. I understand that free alcohol takes precedence over soup...even tomato-orange soup.

Five years ago, I made our wedding cake so I usually make a smaller version of it on our anniversary - a delicious carrot cake from the New York Times Cookbook, but this year I didn't have any carrots, so I thought I'd just make a zucchini cake (who would really care? I mean, cake is cake). But then I didn't have any white flour! Seriously (thus cornbread muffins), so rather than go all the way to the store - 2 miles round trip - I made a cobbler with whole wheat flour. Delish. Anyway, did I ever tell you the story about when I decided to make our wedding cake? I think you should check it out here.

By the way, if you live on our island, don't forget The Southerner is doing a gig this Friday at The Roxy! It's going to be great fun. How do I know? Because he's been playing at the kitchen table while I peel and slice peaches for freezing (30lbs so far, 10lbs to go!). Hope to see you there. Have a great week!

Old Reliable

2009-08-23T19:00:00.001-07:00

When I say "Old Reliable" I'm talking about the soup, not The Southerner. Although he is reliable, he's not that old. I ditched my idea of a month of zucchini soups. Not because I didn't have any, I do...in fact, The Southerner is sauteeing some up right this minute for our supper. Anyway, I just decided that this weekend was pretty busy and so I went for simple & easy. I made potato-leek soup. I got the leeks from The Farmers and the potatoes at the Village and that's pretty much it. Oh, a little half & half too. The soup basically takes about as long to make as it takes you to cut up the leeks and potatoes, plus maybe a half hour of cooking time and five minutes to puree it and add the cream. And yet...it's one of the SS favourites. And mine too. Yumm...I learned to make it from Julia Child when she guest starred on Live With Emeril. The basics are: 3 cups potatoes, 3 cups leeks, cooked in 6 cups of water with 1.5 tsp of salt. Puree when soft. Add warm cream to taste. Voila. Fini!

Speaking of Julia, have y'all seen the movie Julie and Julia? I haven't, but I read the book and it was fantastic. Oh, no! The Southerner has just given me a two minute warning for supper. I better type fast. Lots of people, good conversations, soup, bread, watermelon, dip and chips, great day. Hope yours was too. Food is being plated! Gotta run. More next week.

The Southerner just said, "Okay...soup's on." Haha!

A Zucchini by any other name is a Courgette

2009-08-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

A while back, The Fix-it Guy asked me what soup I was making next. I had just made Curried Zucchini and I told him that since we had the squash coming out of our ears, I had decided to make a month (at least) of soups featuring the gorgeous green vegetable. He sort of grimaced like he thought that was a bad idea, but I would not be stopped (much like the zucchini plant in our garden).

Last week our pesto based vegetable soup featured an abundance of diced zucchini. I have carried on with my plan this week, and today we had a lovely Shredded Courgettes with Orzo Soup. Even though you hear that the French are rivals of the British, for some reason the British like to use some of their words...like courgettes for zucchini, and the Canadians have joined them. While everyone I know around here says zucchini, my Canadian cookbook called this soup Courgettes and Pasta (pronounced paaaasta - like "at" or "cat" - I have no idea why, but also a British pronounciation - or travesty if you're The Southerner!).

I was hoping that by calling it Courgettes and Pasta Soup, I could trick The Fix-it Guy into eating it, but guess what? He hasn't shown up in in a month of Sundays. Three weeks ago, we were on hiatus, then last week he was supposedly too tired. And this week, I've heard he's "off island," but I think maybe he's just afraid of my outstanding cooking abilities, because if he tasted Courgettes & Pasta Soup, then he would have to admit that it IS possible to make a month's worth of yummy zucchini soups (or three weeks, at least).

The Farmers gave me the onions, and I had everything else on hand, so all I had to buy was some gorgeous flat leaf parsley at the market yesterday. With the aid of my thirty year old food processor (it was my mother-in-law's), I made short work of that five pound zucchini that nearly got away from us (FYI, in spite of the fact that everyone tells you to "eat the small ones," there's nothing wrong with huge zukes, just cut them up and remove the seeds and they're fine ~~for company~~ for soup. ).

We had a very nice, somewhat small gathering today - Me, The Southerner, The Neighbour, The Musician, and The Boaters. One of The Boaters has been here before, but today the whole Boating Family came, which was really nice. The Southerner had picked a load of blackberries, so I made a blackberry chipotle sauce (which I KNOW The Fix-it Guy would've loved) and served it over cream cheese with crackers, just for fun and variety. Total Yum. I'm just sayin'.

Nice day, great company, and delish food. Wish y'all were here. Maybe next week, when we'll be having...how do you say zucchini in German?

One Drop Per Acre

2009-08-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

We were promised rain this weekend, and the gardens really need it, but so far we've gotten what Farmer Ralph calls "one drop per acre". A few big, fat, scattered drops. On the plus side, we got to have Sunday Soup out on the porch, which is always nice.

Today I made a variation on a soup I made last year called Green Goddess. It's essentially a vegetable soup with anything green or white in a pesto broth. Well, maybe not anything green...I mean, I didn't put in the mouldy cheese from the back of the fridge (that's more blue-ish anyway).

It did have (in no set amount):
green beans
purple beans (green on the inside)
edamame
chard
leeks
onion
potatoes
white beans
soy beans
water
salt & pepper
and a bunch of fresh basil pesto

I think it turned out pretty well, which is good because there's quite a bit left. Oh, and zucchini! How could I forget the zucchini? I told The Fix-it Guy (the other day) that I was going to make a variation on zucchini soup every week for the next month. Maybe that's why he didn't come today. The Fleece Lady said he was just tired, but perhaps he feared the zucchini takeover.

The neighbour didn't come either. We're sending out a rescue squad any minute just to make sure she's all right. The Brits did come, which was nice as we haven't seen them in ages. Well, we saw they yesterday, but I mean at SS. Also, The Writer, The Real Estate Agent (who brought pie!!!), and The Musician came and we all had lots to eat and a nice chat.

The bread was a batter bread that I made up using two recipes because the one that was the flavour I liked was made with...get this...Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix. You have got to be kidding me! Hot Roll Mix? I did some checking on the internet to find out what exactly is in HRM and while I didn't find out specifics, I did discover that to use it you have to add oil, milk, eggs, water (depending on what kind of rolls you're making). Ummm...that's not a mix! That's flour! And maybe a tad bit of salt and baking powder. Puhleeze! Anyway, I found a different batter bread recipe for cheese bread, and added the sauteed Walla Walla Sweet onions and diced apple to it from the first recipe, and changed the cheese from cheddar to Swiss. All I can say is yum. All The Southerner could say after tasting it was, "Hide half of it for us for later." Done.

I missed y'all last week! It was so odd not having a Sunday Soup that all week I was confused about what day it was. I am glad we're back on schedule again. See you next week.

The 1 Mile Diet

2009-07-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

Hi All.
Crazy time here as I finish the last of my edits, due tomorrow and then my book is done! How exciting. I also have a pub date. Restoring Harmony will be available May 13th, 2010! It's even up on Amazon already if you search under my name.

I know you came here for SS though, not to hear about my book...however, it's just a CRAZY-BUSY so I'll just quickly say that we had 17 people (plus us) today which I think sets a record for a non-event SS (like our anniversary or The Neighbour's birthday).

Exactly one year ago today, I made curried zucchini soup because it was coming out of our ears, and guess what? It's that time again! So instead of blogging, because I'm trying to grab some dinner and then race off to the beach for the sunset after editing all day, I will just send you here to last year's post. It's pretty much the same except the first paragraph. This post is labeled 1 Mile Diet because The Southerner grew the zucchini and the onions over at The Commons.

Enjoy!
P.S. Sunday Soup will be on hiatus next week as we have a family event we're going to and so our kitchen will be dark! Oh, no! I know...but SS will be back on 9 August.

Say Cheese!

2009-07-19T19:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran into the Fleece Lady at the market (selling her lovely fleece goods!) and she mentioned that she had bought some fabulous tomatoes and intended to bring salsa today. I had been thwarted in my attempts to buy cauliflower (no more until the fall - boohoo!) from the farm gate, so I spent a bit of time trying to think of some kind of soup that would be complemented by a salsa appetizer and I decided on cheese.

I had a lot of half & half left over already, so a creamy soup was in order anyway. This turned out to be one of those soups where I just cannot allow myself to add up the cost of it or I we'll be eating oatmeal all week to stay in our food budget. Some soups are like that...especially anything with dairy, but they are usually sooooo worth it, and this time was no exception. I made a lovely cheddar soup with carrots, potato & onion diced up very small, and a hint of sherry. Another problem with expensive soup is that the recipe never makes very much and so even though I tripled the recipe, I only just filled the crockpot. Usually I have a couple of quarts left over to refill with, but not this time. We did not run out, but the last five people to show up did have smallish portions.

Luckily, there was lots of bread, the aforementioned salsa & chips, blueberries brought to us by The Writer, and grapes and more blueberries brought by more guests and cake. Yes, cake! The Older Sister had a birthday yesterday, so today she wore the traditional Sunday Soup Birthday Princess sash and I made a cake for her. She had told me that she wanted a vanilla cake with thick frosting. I wasn't sure if she meant a white cake or a vanilla cake, but I took her at her word and found this recipe online. I added the innards of one vanilla bean to the batter to really up its vanilla quotient, made a vanilla butter cream frosting, and put raspberries and frosting between the layers. It was quite decadent.

The missing raspberry is not because I ran out, but because a certain Birthday Princess thought that she needed a raspberry, and it was her cake after all! You'll remember that I'm teaching The Sisters to cook and it is apparent that we have a ways to go because the Older Sister was surprised to hear that I made the frosting. I make the butter! I make the bread, the soup, crackers, everything you eat here! I can only assume she didn't know one could make frosting. Well...we are going to be having some more cooking lessons ASAP! My work here has clearly hardly begun. But it's fun work and it looks like yummy lessons are in order.

We had a large gathering and it has become apparent that we really need to enlarge our deck, so I think we'll order the supplies and then maybe everyone can come a few hours early one week and we can just knock it out. I'll make cake.

Sunday Soup Haiku

2009-07-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

Cooking in the season
Golden beet soup with greens
Editing on a deadline - no words left

A Fruitful Sunday

2009-07-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to try something new...well, earlier this week, I decided, but today everyone got to experience the fruit of my labours. That would be cherry-pitting labours!

As I mentioned before, one of my goals for this second year is to cook with the season, and this week, the first of the British Columbia cherries came into the store. I spent a good portion of the Cubs game (I listen on the internet radio) on Friday, pitting cherries for our freezer (7lbs!) and while I was doing it, I started thinking about soup recipes I've seen for Cold Hungarian Cherry Soup. Even though the Fix-it Guy seems to think I made up cherry soup, I actually have several recipes in different cookbooks! And there are tonnes of recipes on the web too.

I ended up combining two recipes and here is what I did (loosely). One reason I mixed recipes together is because many of them call for flour and as you know, there are at least two SS attendees who can't have gluten. Another change I made is I used black cherries and reduced the sugar since all recipes pretty much called for tart cherries. This makes A LOT. Like 8 quarts! So you might want to make less, although The Southerner and I do have excellent plans for the leftovers.

The Chef's Cold Hungarian Cherry Soup
3lbs pitted black cherries (halve the cherries, remove the pit, don't cut them up any further)
18 cups of water
2 cups of sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
cinnamon to taste (2 tsp?)
2 cups of sour cream thinned with 1/2 cup of 1/2 & 1/2
1/3 cup cornstarch

Bring the water, cherries, cinnamon and sugar to a boil over high heat, reduce to simmer. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. In a small bowl mix cornstarch with some water and stir well with a fork to get rid of lumps. Add it to the cherries, stirring continuously. You need to make sure it reaches a boil because it won't thicken unless it does. Once it's thickened (slightly, it will still be fairly thin, but you should notice a change), remove from heat. Add lemon juice. Let cool and then put in refrigerator overnight.

Before serving add sour cream that you've thinned with 1/2&1/2 and mix well. Serve in chilled bowls. For bread, I made these drop biscuits. They were very easy and quite yummy too and complimented the soup nicely.

While I think the guests were a little surprised, and some of them even a bit dubious when they heard about the soup, everyone seemed to like it a lot. We also had a bunch of surprises! The Fleece Lady brought...well, I don't know exactly what they're called, but they're these round balls about the size of a truffle made of fruit and nuts and other excellent ingredients. Also, there is a couple who are newish, but becoming regulars at SS and I don't have nicknames for them yet, but The Ones Without Names are originally from Romania and since they heard the soup was Hungarian, they brought some lovely Romanian bread. It was all twisted together and fantastic! Roxy Steve brought delish bakery bread.

The Younger Sister brought pound cake with fresh strawberries and bananas and she used my mixer to whip the cream herself. Very impressive, even though I heard a rumour that she did NOT use a separate bowl for the dry and wet ingredients like I taught her...I'm sure this cannot be true! Her cake was lovely and we still have some!

Our big plans for the leftover soup is we are going to freeze it and serve it over the cake like ice cream. I bet you wish you were us!

Have a great week and eat with the season! Oh, also, on my writing website, I have some gardening and cookbook info you might like to see.

Chaos and Mayhem!

2009-06-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

There were so many people at Sunday Soup today, I can't even count that high! Okay, yes, I'm exaggerating a bit, but there really were a lot. To give you an idea, I couldn't even fit all the dishes into the dishwasher and that has never happened before! It was great fun. I made Tortilla soup which allowed me to be extra lazy because you serve it over tortilla chips, so I didn't have to make any bread!

The Fix-it Guy had friends here to play a jazz gig this afternoon and The Southerner and I rode our bikes down to the Village to hear it. People were looking at us the whole time like, "Ummm...shouldn't you be home making the soup???" We had it under control. Sort of. We did leave at 3pm to run home and mop the floor and make the guacamole and a few other things we'd managed to put off until the last minute.

All I can say is thank goodness for The Artist and her wonderful rhubarb coffee cake because there was a pretty good run on the soup and the cake distracted everyone nicely (and there are a few leftovers!). The Artist is new to Sunday Soup and we were thrilled to have her. She brought a friend that I have met, but unfortunately don't know well enough to nickname. Hopefully he'll come back though!

Just as everyone was making a mass exodus, The Musician and The Irish One showed up for tea and soup and we had a nice chat. Even though The Southerner and I make it a practice to get up and walk guests, if not to their car, at least to the door, we couldn't even haul our sorry butts out of our chairs when they left! The Irish One had to lean over to hug us. My excuse is The Southerner is wearing me out with bike rides and his excuse was he didn't get a nap. We're pathetic, I know.

The really sad part is that The Southerner (remember, his nickname is No Dog, short for No Need For A Dog) ate the leftovers from last night for lunch today and that's what I had planned to pass off as dinner tonight. Now I don't know WHAT we're going to eat. Maybe if I stall it will get dark and we can go to bed without supper. Oh, wait, it never really gets dark here, does it? I guess one of us will have to give in and come up with something.

Next time someone asks me, "What can I bring to SS?" instead of saying "Nothing" I'm going to say, "A vegetarian casserole that we can eat after everyone leaves." Haha! Just kidding. DO NOT BRING ANY VEGETARIAN CASSEROLES. That is just an old joke from last year when everyone found out that The Southerner needs supper afterward.

Anyway, have a wonderful week and eat well.

Mmmm...mmm...spinach!

2009-06-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

Today I made one of my favourite soups. Three times. Yep, three times. It was made-to-order Egg Drop Soup day. I did this last year too, and it was a big hit then. When I went to the farm gate yesterday, they had tonnes of spinach, so I bought 8 huge bunches and I washed, chopped, and steamed (3 minutes) 6 of the bunches and put it in the freezer. Spinach is a great thing to have on hand for soups, stews, or pasta sauces and we eat a lot of it.

They had already sold all the green onions, but The Farmer is my pal, so he and I went out to the field and he picked me enough green onions for my soup. Have I mentioned I love living in a small community where I know so many people? Well, I do. The Southerner and I are very blessed (although it did take me about 2 hours to do my errands yesterday that probably would've taken 45 minutes if I hadn't stopped to talk to all my friends along the way - but really, that's the good part, right?).

Yesterday was egg day too. Every other Saturday I pick up 2 dozen eggs from the alpaca farm. Those alpacas are amazing. You didn't know they laid eggs, did you? Haha! They obviously have chickens there too, and I'm just being silly, but there's nothing silly about the freshness and beauty of farm eggs. I never even liked eggs before we moved here and now...well, now I'm typing this while The Southerner makes me an egg sammich for supper! Anyway, the egg drop soup gets poured steaming hot over bowls of fresh spinach and green onions. Yummm...and so easy to make. We had a nice group who conveniently came in waves too, which worked out perfectly for making soup to order.

And now, well, now, as I said, I'm being waited on by The Southerner, I'm sitting on the couch with Miss Sophie, and I'm updating SS after having just ridden over to see The Musician who gave me a whole bunch of rhubarb from his yard...my life is pretty darn good. And I hope yours is too. Until next week...eat lots of good food! Oh, there's the dinner bell! See y'all next week!

A Higher Consciousness of Soup

2009-06-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today I made an announcement. I have reached two conclusions that will undoubtedly have some affect on future Sunday Soups.

The first is that I have decided it's no fun if I worry about running out of soup. So now I'm not going to worry. I will make a big batch of soup. I will have it available to the crowd. And when it's gone, it's gone! Last week was stressful, when it should've been fun. I prefer fun.

The other thing is that I am now cooking in the season. I actually always try to cook with whatever vegetables are in season. You won't find asparagus in a fall soup or butternut squash in the spring here at SS. However, because last year my goal was a different soup every week, I also tried to make sure that I didn't have two cream soups in a row, or two tomato soups too close together. Now that I have finished that one year and I'm free to make anything any time, I will be cooking with whatever veggies people bring me, or The Southerner grows, or I find fresh at The Farm Gate. That means that even though we had cream of spinach soup two or three weeks ago, we had cream of kale soup today. It's all good.

The Fix-it Guy declared that I have "reached a new level of soup consciousness" and I think he's right. Cook in the season, and don't worry for no reason! After all, if we run out of soup, there's always bread (and vice versa).

Today we had a smallish group, and it was very pleasant. The Fix-it Guy, The Fleece Lady, and The Southerner all donated lots and lots of kale and boy was it a green soup! It turned out lovely. It's a recipe that I got off the internet last year and I can't remember where so I won't post it, but if you're dying for a great kale soup, leave me a comment and I'll email it to you.

The Neighbour, The Younger Sister, Roxy Steve, and The Musician all put in appearances too. As did Tigre, but he hissed at Miss Sophie, so we sent him on his way. Oh, yes, and the raccoon dropped in near the end. Lucky for him, The Neighbour had already gone home. He likes to terrorize her house and I'm pretty sure that even though she's got a gimp in her giddyup, she would've hobbled for the hose and squirted him full-on (water is about the only way to keep raccoons away). We just said, "keep going you!" and he did. And then we talked about how beautifuly he was, because he truly is. As long as he's not destroying your house and eating all the cat food.

I made garlic knots for bread. They are very simple. Just pizza dough rolled into strands, tied into knots and baked. Then topped with garlic butter, Parmesan, and black pepper.

The Southerner finally got around to taking a picture of the Ugly Mugs, so I will leave you with that! Have a great week.

Going, going...quick add more milk!

2009-06-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

Hi All. Nice to be back. After two guest chefs (The Older Sister & The Southerner), I am cooking again. I'm still covered up in edits, but now I have a cover too! Yes, it's true, that my book Restoring Harmony which is coming out NEXT SUMMER now has a cover and you can see it here.

I did manage to drag myself out of my office yesterday to go to the market in search of spinach. My plan was to make egg drop soup, which I made last summer and was fabulous. However, while there were whole tables of spinach last week, there wasn't spinach to be had this week. I ran into Roxy Steve and he requested that I make corn chowder instead.

I have a recipe for a light summery corn chowder and so I made that (leaving out the bacon) and ummm...well, I thought I had a lot, but apparently corn chowder hit the spot of SS goers today because by 5:15 I was not only adding the reserves to the crockpot, but adding milk to sort of ummm...stretch it out! In the end, we did have a bowl or two left over, but only because of the added milk!

We did have a first today. This was the very first Sunday Soup that I did not make the bread (except when The Southerner made his fantastic cornbread or the Older Sister made it a couple of weeks ago). What I mean is, it came from a bakery. Roxy Steve donated it. Definitely yummy, and surprisingly time saving!

The Fleece Lady brought a fantastic Cesar salad. Yummm...and she left me all the fixings so I can make some more. We had so many people here today and my brain is so fried from over 75 hours of editing (in the last 9 days!) that I'm not even going to try and recap. But did I mention my book has a cover? And that they moved up the publication date to next summer (not next fall, like I thought)? Oh, okay...since you asked me so nicely, I'll put the cover here for you.

The Last of May

2009-05-31T22:36:00.000-07:00

The Cook was covered up with edits on her book today so I, The Southerner, made the soup. OK, she coached me a bit but it was more or less my thing. I called it Parsley Pesto Soup since one of the main ingredients was a batch of the Fleece Lady's parsley pesto. Also in the mix were potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, fresh onions, dried onions from The Farmers, kidney beans, diced tomatoes, salt and pepper. It cooked up without a hitch, scented the kitchen nicely and had rich mustardy colour that made it easy on the peeps. It was hearty too and seemed to be well received by the crew which included The Fixit Guy, The Fleece Lady, The Neighbour, The Brits and some newcomers we met at The Roxy on Friday night. We'll call them The Bikers since they arrived by bicycle and we hope they come back. Oh, and of course The Cook herself emerged from her office to hang out on the porch with us and have a cup. She was bleary-eyed but cheery. Though no one complained about my creation, I'm sure all will welcome her back to the helm of Sunday Soup next week. Thanks to everyone who dropped by and we'll see y'all next Sunday.

Peace,

The Southerner

Souper Star Sister!

2009-05-24T19:35:00.000-07:00

So last night I got to rest on my laurels, or the kitchen chair, really, while The Older Sister made the soup, the bread, and the butter. Okay, I helped, but she did a lot of it and not only was the soup fantastic, but The Fleece Lady proclaimed it "One of the top 5 Soups". Seriously! And she's eaten a lot of them, so that is a high honour.

Unfortunately, Older Sister did not hear this high praise because something came up and she wasn't able to make it to SS. We were also missing The Southerner because he really needed a nap. This is because The Fix-it Guy and The Southerner have been working really hard fixing stuff and he was too worn out to socialize. He slept on The Neighbour's futon couch and her cat, Tigre, kept him company. He's feeling much better after a couple of hours of sleep and soup, bread, and the wonderful salad that The Writer brought. No not me, the other writer.

You know, I don't know if he already has a nickname or not...my brain is not really functioning. But he's a writer, and so that is his nickname. Anyway, The Writer and his lovely wife...hmmm...I know she doesn't have a nickname....hopefully today she won't mind being The Lovely Wife and in the future, when I'm not so tired (from resting on my laurels), I'll come up with something better...anyway they brought a fantastic bean salad and boy was it yummy. Lucky for us, there was some left over and it's all ours! Yay us!

And The Fleece Lady brought her raw vegetable dip, so we scored big today. It was lovely and sunny out and we were on the porch. Oh, and you probably want to know what this fantastic soup was, don't you? It was Leek-Potato-Spinach. It was supposed to be Kale-Potato, but The Fix-it Guy kept The Southerner busy so late last night that he couldn't go to the garden and get us the kale, so we improvised with lovely veggies that we had from The farmers market.

If your'e interested in this simple soup, it works with pretty much any veggie that you have and you can make a variety of combinations based on what sounds good to you. It is 1 cup of water for every 1 cup of veggies and some salt. Generally, at least 3 cups are potatoes to give it some body. Once everything's mushy, you just puree it add a little cream and adjust the seasonings. Voila. Soup! Ours was 8 cups of potatoes, 2 cups of leeks, 4 cups of spinach (packed) and 14 cups of water, plus a cup of cream.

That's about it around here. Hope you had a great week and you have another fantastic one coming up. Eat well!

Life...

2009-05-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

Y'all will have to forgive me, this will be a short post, and probably lack my usual enthusiasm. It's been a long weekend, and not just because here in in Canada it is May Long Weekend (tomorrow is Victoria Day, as in Queen Victoria).

On Friday, our beloved Grinder passed on over to the other side and so while SS was joyful today, and we had lots of laughter and good food and wonderful friends, The Southerner, Miss Sophie, and I do have heavy hearts. Along with many other SS regulars who knew and loved Grinder too. You can read more about him here and here, if you're so inclined.

Briefly, the soup was Tomato Orange (as pictured to the left) and The Southerner made cornbread. We had some of the regulars, some who come occasionally, a friend here from Toronto who also brought a friend from the States and lots of sunshine. It was also probably the loveliest, warmest day of the year so far and we moved SS out onto the porch.

Anyway, more next week. In memory of our sweetie pie, I leave you with this picture.

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day, Mom & Grandma, and all the other mothers of kids, cats, or others (?)!

Today's soup was a white bean puree with sundried tomatoes and kale (from The Southerner's garden plot). You can read more about the soup here because I did make a variation on it (spinach instead of kale) last December, if you want the recipe. Oh, and I also used some scalded heavy cream instead of soy milk today. New SS motto: Hardening your arteries one Sunday at a time!

It has been a great weekend. We spent a bunch of time doing weekendy type things, like picking kale and going to GIRO (the recycle centre/thrift store). If you want ANYTHING all you have to do is say aloud, "I really need some bamboo ski poles to use as walking sticks" and then if you are patient, they will show up at GIRO. This is what The Southerner has been saying aloud for some time now, and while we were standing around chatting (another big activity at GIRO), someone walked up with bamboo ski poles to drop off for donation. The Southerner was on them like a duck on a june bug because just because he asked for them, doesn't mean someone else might not be standing by to beat him out. I was thrilled (heavy sarcasm) to see that the GIRO gods had not only answered his prayer once, but twice. And now, I too am the proud owner of a pair of bamboo ski poles. Two pairs for $6! Such a deal. The Southerner had ulterior motive plans too. He is going to sharpen the metal ends so that we can pick up garbage on our walks. Oh, joy! Will the fun never end?

Two weeks ago, my request to the GIRO gods was a stack of dessert plates that matched and wern't too ugly. I am happy to say I got a set of 14 for $2. This week...I needed teacups because tea at SS has become almost as important as the soup. The first person to arrive gets to pick the tea for the big pot, and this has really encouraged some people to arrive early (yes, I'm talking about The Brits and The Neighbour. Tea is very important to Brits, but The Neighbour just likes to be the first one here!). Of course, I was rewarded again and got a great deal on some bone china cups and saucers - 8 for $4 plus six dessert plates thrown in).

While standing around the bike parts (Attention GIRO gods: we do not need any more bike parts!) we ran into a couple that we met at The Commons last year when they were visiting. They have a tiny trailer on a piece of land that they hope to retire on someday (probably not in the trailer!) and the woman informed me that the china I'd just bought was really great.

"You can drop it and it will just bounce," she said.

I decided just to take her word for it. She came to Sunday Soup today too and so I must "name" them. I think I will call them The Part-timers. Anyway, Mr. Part-timer had to go back to Vancouver, but Mrs. Part-timer brought lovely strawberries and made some new friends very quickly that way. It was nice to have her and we hope they both come back soon!

Just as we were closing up shop, The Musician came bounding up the stairs, "Am I too late?" He still had 22 minutes before seven o'clock, so we let him in. We would've let him in any time, of course! We had a nice long visit and many strawberries were eaten along with bread, The Fleece Lady's fantastic vegetable dip, and of course, soup.

All in all, a very nice weekend. I hope you had a great one too!

P.S. For those of you wondering how the cooking lessons with The Sisters are going, we are taking a short break while they get over their fevers/flu (?). And don't worry, they have not been over here since last Sunday, so you don't have to worry about their germs. Hopefully they will be well enough to make next week's soup. I sent lots of soup to their house this week, so I'm sure they will recover quickly! Get well soon, girls.

One Year Anniversary!

2009-05-04T19:35:00.000-07:00

So I went to see the male half of The Brits today to get a shiatsu massage and let me tell you that if you've never had one, and you live here on the island, just stop what you're doing and call to make your appointment. Very cool. You can read more about it here. In addition to the treatment, he reminded me that I'd totally forgotten to update this blog!

I didn't actually forget last night. We went to a play and I was too tired and hungry to update when we got home. And then today, it just sort of got away from me. So here I am, ready to update.

First, if you're missing something in the above picture (the glasses, not The Southerner, who I'm keeping) then you left them here. Doesn't he look soooo cool? Whoever you are, you must have a small head because they fit The Anthony Pinhead. Not that The Southerner IS a pinhead, he just has one like all the Anthonys (one reason we were happy he took my last name when we got married - the more pinheads the better!).

Okay, back to the business at hand. I did my first author interview here (if you tried this link earlier, it was wrong, but is fixed now). Oh, wait, that's not what you came here for, is it? You want to know about the first Sunday Soup anniversary! Well, I was a little confused about whether we should celebrate the 52nd soup or the first anniversary and I seem to have told a few people different things!

Anyway, we had a great time, with a vegetable soup that included the first greens from the community gardens (kale and bok choy). I made Parmesan & black pepper crackers and Italian herb crackers and served them with cream cheese and homemade raspberry chipotle sauce (yumm!). We had about nine guests, including The Sisters who have not starved while their parents are away (because the whole island is feeding them). In fact, they brought some lovely scones that they baked themselves! Also, The Walker and her husband, Mr. Smiles finally came to SS! To be fair, they tried once during the winter, but it was dark and snowing and they never did find the house (although they helped dig someone's car out of the snow because that's just the kind of nice people they are!). We were glad to see everyone, and they all left before 6:30 so we were able to stick a note on the door that said, "Went to the play!" and go see some fun theatre at the Theatre Centre.

Stay tuned because I'm teaching The Sisters to cook (we made red beans and rice the other day and also pizza dough and homemade pizza) and they are going to make the soup! If not next weekend, then the following one. You won't want to miss that! I'm looking forward to just sitting in the chair and saying, "Now...chop that!" and "Stir the soup!"

Good eating, everyone!

Sundae Soup & a list of the First 52!

2009-04-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Today was the 52nd Sunday Soup and to celebrate, we had Virginia Peanut Sundae Soup. The soup recipe came from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Practically Everything Vegetarian. The "sundae" part was my own idea.

I reduced the amount of cream that the recipe called for and then I whipped up a quart of whipping cream. I personally dished up today's soup (it's usually a more casual serve-yourself event). First the soup, then I topped it with a dollop of whipped cream, then toasted coconut, chopped peanuts, a few green onions, and a dash of hot sauce.

The Southerner took the photos. Aren't they fun?

I was kind of surprised how creamy and lovely the whipped cream made the soup. I kind of thought it would just melt and be just like if you'd added regular cream to the soup, but while it did melt, it didn't lose its light texture and it made the soup really frothy and decadent.

We had more people than I can count...okay, I can count that high, but I'm not going to! Too tired! It was great. Lots of regulars, some we see occasionally, some newbies. Really a fun day. And we collected 18 cans of soup/food for the local food bank (plus The Librarian's who forgot to bring hers, but remembered to bring me chocolates. Priorities people! She's got them!).

I really wasn't sure how many people would be coming so The Southerner and I made 6 times the recipe. Yes. Six. That would be 24 servings. We have a lot of soup leftover, but it was really tasty, so that's okay. Also, we have friends whose parents are away and the poor starving waifs don't know how to cook. They may want some!

The bread was my standard no-knead, and so many people want to learn to make it that I'm planning a class. I'm not sure if I'll teach it here or at The Commons or ??? but I do think I'll do it soon. Maybe in May.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a list of all 52 Soups that I made over the last year. Many are original recipes (although I haven't marked them), and only about 2 were recipes I followed to the letter. Most I adapted or changed somehow. You should be able to find info about each of them in the blog by looking for its date, if you're interested.

I think, perhaps later in the week, after I've met my deadline for my book, I will write something about what this year has meant to us, but right now, I have to go eat the milk chocolates out of the box before The Southerner gets to them. Er...I mean, dinner. I have to go eat dinner.

Thanks for sharing Sunday Soup with us!
Anthony Sunday Soup List - May 4th, 2008 to April 26th, 2009
1. May 4th, 2008 – Chilli
2. May 11th, 2008 – Vegetable
3. May 18th, 2008 – Thai Coconut with Tofu
4. May 25th, 2008 – Potato Leek
5. June 1st, 2008 – Spaghetti Squash and Sweet Potato Puree
6. June 8th, 2008 – Lentil Vegetable
7. June 15th, 2008 – Corn Chowder
8. June 22nd, 2008 – Tomato Orange
9. June 29th, 2008 – Roasted Garlic, Potato, & Red Pepper
10. July 6th, 2008 – Carrot & Coriander
11. July 13th, 2008 – Green Goddess Vegetable
12. July 20th, 2008 – Egg Drop
13. July 27th, 2008 – Curried Zucchini
14. August 3rd, 2008 – Onion
15. August 10th, 2008 – White Bean & Garlic
16. August 17th, 2008 – Cheesy Potato Chowder
17. August 24th, 2008 – Black Bean with Roasted Vegetable Stock
18. August 31st, 2008 – Lebanese Lentil
19. September 7th, 2008 – Cream of Kale
20. September 14th, 2008 – Barley Vegetable (The Southerner made this)
21. September 21st, 2008 – Cream Cheese Broccoli
22. September 28th, 2008 – Red Beans & Rice
23. October 5th, 2008 – Yellow Broth
24. October 12th, 2008 – Spinach & Bok Choy
25. October 19th, 2008 – Harvest Vegetable (lots of root veggies & squash)
26. October 26th, 2008 – Pumpkin and Butternut Squash Puree
27. November 2nd, 2008 – Roasted Potato & Mushroom
28. November 9th, 2008 – Sweet Corn with Cream Cheese
29. November 16th, 2008 – Split Pea with Tofurky Sausage
30. November 23rd, 2008 – Seven Bean
31. November 30th – Squash & Rice with Apple (scrapped and replaced with emergency stand-by Potato Leek)
32. December 7th, 2008 – Minestrone
33. December 14th, 2008 – Red Lentil
34. December 21st, 2008 – White Bean, Sundried Tomato, and Spinach
35. December 28th, 2008 – Cream of Vegetable Puree
36. January 4th, 2009 – Broccoli and Toasted Almond
37. January 11th, 2009 – Baked Potato with Cheese
38. January 18th, 2009 – Cream of Spinach (at Mum & Dad’s)
39. January 25th, 2009 – Sweet Potato
40. February 1st, 2009 – Lentil Barley
41. February 8th, 2009 – Tortilla Soup
42. February 15th, 2009 – Burnt Quinoa, replaced with Cream of Cauliflower
43. February 22nd, 2009 – Red Pepper Orange with Ricotta Dumplings
44. March 1st, 2009 – Parsnip Potato
45. March 8th, 2009 – Yellow Split Pea
46. March 15th, 2009 – Carrot Turnip
47. March 22nd, 2009 – Mushroom Barley
48. March 29th, 2009 – Roasted Veggie Puree
49. April 5th, 2009 – Sundried Tomato Lentil
50. April 12th, 2009 – Black & White Bean
51. April 19th, 2009 – Pinto Bean
52. April 26th, 2009 – Virginia Peanut Sundae Soup

If you want to learn how to make this wonderful flourless chocolate cake that I made for The Fleece Lady for her birthday, drop by my website (and scroll down a bit).

Happy Sunday to you all. And thank you so much for being part of our lives. We are truly blessed. Eat well!

Missing: One Southern Gentleman

2009-04-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

Today's Sunday Soup was super crowded, but everyone noticed right away that The Southerner was missing. They're a sharp crowd, our friends. He was feeling a bit under the weather, so at 4pm, we did a house swap and The Neighbour came over here and he went to her house and slept on her couch with her kitty (don't tell our cats). He was missed, but is feeling a bit better now, although I expect he'll be taking it easy for at least a few days.

The soup was a pinto bean Mexican type thing that I totally made up on Friday night. There were two main factors involved in choosing this week's soup. One: I could make it without having to go to the store. Two: All I had to do was open my cupboard. Okay, I know those are the same things, but two reasons sounds better than one. This is a very simple soup. I don't have any measurements, but if you want to make it, I'm sure you can figure it out.

Cooked pinto beans (don't use canned, you'll need too many cans and they taste gross) and their liquid.
Water
Canned tomatoes
Corn
Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (actually, I just used the sauce)
Taco seasoning
Salt & Pepper

Cook the beans. Take 2/3 of them and put them in a big pot with some water and blend with an immersion blender. Add the canned tomatoes, some frozen corn, and the rest of the cooked beans and the cooking liquid and as much water as you want to make your soup the consistency you're hoping for. Add the seasonings and adobo sauce. Simmer. Best let it sit overnight for the flavours to meld.

The bread was even easier than the soup because we didn't have any! I just opened some corn tortilla chips. Oh, and I served cheese and chives with the soup.

If you're wondering why I took such an easy route this week, it's because I am on a very tight deadline for my book, I am running out of ideas for soup (thank goodness next week makes 52 and then I am free to make repeats since one year of new soups was my goal), and yesterday was my birthday and I didn't feel like spending it in the kitchen.

I did spend today in the kitchen though and made a lovely chocolate-rhubarb-raspberry cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting and then offered it up as "leftover birthday cake". The Realtor brought two new-to-the-island people and a strawberry rhubarb pie (he knows what I like!) too, so there was a lot of dessert.

We had some guests we hadn't seen in a while, as well as a lot of the regular crowd. All in all, even without The Southerner, we had twelve people, plus me, and the cats so it was practically a party!

AND NOW FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
Next week is the 52 week of Sunday Soup. At one time, before I knew I'd be on a deadline, I had intended to do all kinds of cool things to celebrate, like have door prizes, and make three or four soups, and ask everyone to bring their own soups to swap with each other, and, and...

Well, anyway, that is not going to happen because I don't have time to organize anything except my book this week. However, you still want to come next week if you can. And I'll give you a hint why. Okay, ready? Here's your hint:

Sundae Soup

Yep, that's your hint. Now aren't you curious? I thought so. While the whole point of SS is for y'all to be able to drop in without saying whether you're coming or not, if you know you're coming, and you want to let us know this week, it would be appreciated. I want to make sure that I have enough soup for the masses! If you're not sure, no biggie. Feel free to drop in. I will make sure I have lots.

Also, to celebrate one year of SS, we will be collecting canned soup for the food bank, so here's your chance to "bring something" if you want. Totally optional.

Fifty Soups - Black & White Bean Soup

2009-04-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

Today marked the fiftieth Sunday Soup. So the question becomes, do we "celebrate" one year the week we reach 52, or is the anniversary the first weekend in May since our first one was the first Sunday in May? I'm kind of voting for a celebration of sorts in May because I'm on a big deadline for my book. I have to turn in this round of edits by April 30th. We'll be lucky to get soup for Week 52 at all! Maybe The Southerner will make it.

Today, to help me out, The Southerner did make corn bread. The soup was Black & White Bean Soup. I made it up, so I think I'll include the recipe here so that I have a record of it. You might want to try it too. It's yummy. This makes close to 9 quarts, so make sure you have a lot of hungry people.

4 stalks of celery - diced small
4 carrots - diced small
1 onion - diced small
6 quarts of light coloured vegetable stock
3 cups dried white beans - around 6 cups cooked
2 cups dried black beans - around 4 cups cooked
Thyme
Rosemary
Butter
Olive oil
salt & pepper

To make a light vegetable stock, I just used carrot peelings, onions ends and peelings, and a bit of celery, water, salt. Bring to a boil, simmer 20 minutes or so. Strain.

In a large pan, saute for just a few minutes carrots, celery, and onion in some olive oil and a glob of butter. Season with rosemary and thyme, s&p. You want your vegetables to still be quite firm so they don't turn to mush in your soup. Set aside.

Add about half of the WHITE beans to the stock, puree with a hand blender. You can skip this step if you want, but it thickens it just a little bit, which is nice. Then add the rest of the WHITE beans and the veggies. Simmer until the veggies are cooked through.

Rinse the cooked black beans really well. The water should run clear. If you skip the rinse, your soup will turn blue-ish-purple-ish and your white beans will turn grey. Blech! Add them to the soup. Season with salt & pepper and yummm..you're done!

I made a lot of soup because of how we emptied the pot last week. We had eight people, including two new-to-the-island people. We made a pretty serious dent in it, but there's still some left. I think this might be one of my more favourite soups. I like how light it is, but the beans give it a bit of body.

The Fleece Lady brought my favourite raw vegetable dip AND she brought some just to put in my fridge for us for later! Yippee! Score! In fact, The Fleece Lady and The Fix-it Guy had us over for breakfast this morning, so we ate very well today. We did learn one important lesson though...if you're going to someone's house for breakfast on a Sunday, you should probably clean the house on Saturday. When we got home well after noon, we had to scurry. Thank goodness The Southerner could also go by the nickname, Cleans Fast Under Pressure. Of course, he's a guy...it's probably in his genes! I guess that means my alternate nickname is Lucky Girl.

Until next week...Eat Well!

P.S. I finally moved the old live journal blog over to this blog, so the entire year is here for your entertainment. I will be posting a list of the entire year in soup pretty soon too.

Early Bird Gets the Soup!

2009-04-05T18:54:00.000-07:00

We have a first!!!! This is the first time that we have officially run out of soup. And we didn't run out at a quarter seven. Nope! We ran out at 5:55pm. Yes, really! And considering no one came until about 4:30pm, that's pretty amazing. I didn't even get to set aside a container for my grandma (sorry, Grandma!) before it was gone!

It's true that my pot was not filled to the brim, but I had about 7 quarts, which is still quite a bit. And it was a Sundried Tomato and Lentil Soup that was much more like a hearty stew so I kind of expected it to go further, although the recipe did say "serves 10" and we had more than that.

The Librarian gave me a cookbooklet from Vancouver's Commercial Drive last week and the recipe came from that book. It's a specialty at Pane Vero Bakery and Cafe. This was an excellent recipe and I followed it almost to the letter. I used regular parsley instead of flat leaf and that's about the only change I made. It was extremely delicious!

We had a full house today too, and everyone brought hearty appetites because the weather was nice and so they'd all been working outside in their gardens all day. I think there were 11 guests plus myself and The Southerner. The bread was a nice Irish Soda Herb bread, which I've made before, but this time I left out the currants . We voted last time and thought that while it tasted fine with currants, it was an odd combination with soup.

Those who missed my homemade mozzarella cheese last week, were wowed and amazed by the butter I made this week! If you know how to make butter, shhhhh....don't tell...Everyone thinks I'm a whiz in the kitchen now. Although someone did ask, "Where do you keep the cow?" Alas, no cow, only deer, and while they like me enough to eat out of my hands, I've never heard of anyone milking a deer and I'm not going to be the first one to try that.

I guess with the nice weather we will start getting more people to Sunday Soup. Also, we know more people than we did nearly a year ago when we started it (thanks to SS!). I might have to invest in another pot for back-up soup for the summer. Luckily, The Southerner's cracked ribs are healing nicely and he's been back in the garden, so in a few months, he'll be bringing home produce for me to turn into soup.

So today's lesson is: If you are coming for "the hang" as The Southerner says, "fall by the house any Sunday between 4pm-7pm", but if you're coming for the soup, "Get here early!"

Here's the butter!

Whey Good!

2009-03-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

So last week I went to a cheese making workshop. I learned to make paneer and mozzarella. Really. No kidding! And guess what? It's super easy and costs about half as much as buying it, but the really cool part is you get to say, "I made the cheese" and everyone goes, "Ooooh" and "Ahhhh!"

Of course, I'm no good at pretending that it was terribly difficult. I had to tell everyone the truth - it took 30 minutes to make the mozzarella and it's really simple. I really had no choice but to admit the truth anyway since over the last 3 months, approximately 75 people here on the island have taken the course and undoubtedly one of them would know someone from Sunday Soup and blow my story if I said I am now a master cheese artisan.

Anyway, the byproduct of making mozzarella is you have about 4.5 quarts of whey (yes, as in Little Miss Muffet eating her curds and whey). There are a lot of things you can do with whey and it's full of vitamins and minerals and such, so you definitely want to do something with it, even though it looks a little scary. Apparently, and I did not try any of these things, you can mix it with orange juice and a sweetener for a lovely beverage, you can make lemonade with it, you can mix it into your pig slop or chicken feed and give it to your pigs/chickens respectively, you can give it to your dog (but not at night because it makes the dog have to pee a lot and you'll be up all night letting the dog in and out), you can use it to water your roses or other plants, and you can add it to bread dough instead of water. But guess what I did with it? Yep. I used it in my soup.

I read on the internet that you can use it in place of stock, so yesterday I roasted up a big pile of veggies - onion...hmmm...I was going to start with onion and then I just remembered that I totally forgot the onion! Anyway, okay...here's the real list: red potatoes, yellow pepper, broccoli, parsnip, carrots, mushrooms, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and beets tossed with olive oil, salt & pepper and a few herbs. When they were done, I simply dumped them into the whey, mashed it all with a potato masher, and then I pureed it with my immersion blender.

By the way, it's really hard to chop up mushrooms with an immersion blender, so even though I attacked them individually, forcing them to the bottom of the pan, a few escaped and there were chunks of mushrooms in my roughly pureed soup. It added character. I seasoned it with French Thyme, Celery Salt, Cayenne, and a bit more salt and pepper.

And guess what? The verdict, after everyone got over their fascination with the fact that I made the mozzarella and it only takes thirty minutes, was that they loved the soup and that is why I'm calling it Whey Good Roasted Veggie Soup.

The bread was no-knead bread and kind of rolled it out flat and then added chunks of mozzarella (they just disappeared, so I don't recommend wasting good cheese this way - use a harder cheese) and sundried tomatoes and then rolled it up into a loaf. It was tasty enough that every scrap disappeared though, despite the vanishing mozz.

Attendance was good today and there were many people we don't see very often and a new guest. The only regular was The Neighbour. It was lots of fun, although we do hope the half of The Brits that isn't feeling well, gets better soon!

Oh, and I want to say that I am now on a major deadline and I seriously couldn't have made today's SS happen without my fabulous sous chef, The Southerner. I hereby promote him to Full Chef, at least until April 30th when I hand off the next draft of my book to my editor. As Full Chef, his duties include, but are not limited to: Tea, Coffee & Breakfast (which he does as a Sous Chef anyway), Morning Break Snack, Lunch, Afternoon Snack w/Tea & Dinner. Okay, stop laughing. It was worth a shot!

Mushroom Moderate

2009-03-22T19:54:00.001-07:00

I spent the entire weekend in the kitchen (nearly). Starting yesterday morning, I made, banana bread, oatmeal, the filling for samosas, two vegetarian moussaka casseroles, grilled cheese & soup for The Southerner's lunch, today's soup, and a loaf of bread. Today I finished the bread, the samosas (yum!), and taught The Southerner how to make 8 Grain Cereal. It was my choice to be in the kitchen so long, and it was fun, but I'm looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow!

On Saturday morning I still had not chosen a soup, so I got out an old library discard, The Low-fat Vegetarian Cookbook, that I picked up at the library book sale. What's hilarious about this book is that it says it's vegetarian, but when you open it up, there are all these recipes called "almost vegetarian" that have meat in them! No wonder the library discarded it.

Anyway, there are a few soups in it and one of them was Mushroom Barley. I had the ingredients (or so I thought, The Southerner ended up having to go to the store for barley right about the time I was ready to add it!). This soup is a brothy soup with a lot of mushrooms. And I mean a lot. I cut them really thinly because I once had a mushroom soup with them cut paper thin and it was really good. The soup was a big hit today, but it crossed a line for me and so I didn't have any.

You see, it wasn't until maybe five years I tentatively began to eat mushrooms. I learned how to cook them from Alton Brown and suddenly, they were pretty appealing. The more I have them, the more I like them. However, this soup, with a pound and a half of mushrooms, cooked in a vegetable broth that eventually became a deep, rich, brown, mushroomy broth really fell just across the line of "too many mushrooms in one dish". Luckily, The Southerner LOVED it, and judging by how our guests emptied the crockpot, I think overall it was a good soup. One guest even asked for the recipe. Which oddly enough, might be the very first recipe that I have followed exactly! Well, except that I used homemade vegetable stock instead of junk from a can.

Anyway, we had a very nice Sunday Soup. A few regulars, one guest we haven't seen since summer, some newbies...very nice. And we started it off with a Tea Party. We tested the mango tea (a previous SS favourite), vanilla jasmine, maple, and green. I think that the mango is still on top, although the vanilla jasmine was met with interest and smiles. I alone like the maple (I drink it every day).

And that's about it. And Grandma, I know you're reading this each week and are always hoping that I'm freezing you the soup to bring you when we come to visit. Don't worry, I am. But I also know not to save you any Mushroom Barley! Like Grandma, like Granddaughter, eh?

Eat well!

Fast SS Post

2009-03-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

How fast can I type? We've had crazy weather here, almost to rival Tennessee, except there aren't those wild temp changes (oh, and those pesky tornadoes). It's blowing like crazy now though after a day of snow that didn't stick, snow that did stick, snow that melted off, snow and rain mixed, a burst of sunshine that lasted about 3 minutes, and more snow and lots and lots of wind. The reason I'm typing as fast as I can is because the power has already gone off once. I looked at the clock when it went out and said to the The Southerner, "Hmmm...6:49pm. I reckon we're out for the night unless it comes right back on this second." and POOF, the power came back on. Still, I'd be surprised if we made it through the night with power. And being that we're on an island, that means we won't get it back until tomorrow.

The soup was yummy. A concoction I made loosely based on a recipe from Canadian Living. I was looking at the March issue at the doctor office (while The Southerner had his ribs checked out - guess what? Yep. Still sore, still nothing to be done) and found a recipe from Quebec for carrot turnip soup. I didn't have anything to write with, and even though everyone I've told this story to has said, "Why didn't you just rip the recipe out of the magazine?" I simply read it twice, hoping I'd remember it. And then I came home and made up my own soup. It turned out fine, so no biggie! I also made cheese and green onion biscuits. Yummmm!

We had some of the regulars here today and a couple of guests. They're all wondering what the nicknames for the guests will be, and since I'm not feeling very creative (and I'm still typing as fast as I can), I'm going to go for the obvious ones. The Fix-it Guy's sister is going to be called, The Sister and the other guest is going to be called The Mudgekin because she is from Mudge Island and that's what we call them when we shoot potatoes at them from potato cannons on Canada Day (I can't type fast enough to explain this). I was informed by The Mudgekin that they have "real" guns on Mudge, so maybe shooting potatoes at them is not the smartest thing we could do, but whatever. I don't shoot potatoes anyway...I make them into soup.

Whew! I think I made it! Have a great week.

Daylight Sunday!

2009-03-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

I love Daylight Savings Time. I don't even mind giving up the hour. It's not like I lost an hour of sleep or anything. I lost an hour of cleaning up the house before people came to SS. Who cares about losing an hour of cleaning? And now, SS is over and it's still lovely and light outside! I'm so excited.

What was so interesting is that people came around the same time as usual, but they stayed longer like they do in summer. Everyone changed their clocks except The Fix It Guy so we were all wondering where they were when 5:30 came and went and we hadn't seen them. Turns out he was lucky he even got to come at all because he was so busy fixing something that The Fleece Lady had to back the car out of the driveway to get him to run in and change his clothes and clean up so he could go along. She almost left without him, but you know...she might have needed something fixed, so it was smart to wait for him, just in case.

It was more of a party atmosphere too because everyone is happy about the light. Living this far north, winter days are soooooo short that we forget how lovely and long the summer evenings are and today we were all reminded of that. I think it made everyone quite cheerful.

The soup was a yummy yellow split pea soup. I started with a recipe, but soon abandoned it. I wanted to avoid the usual gloppy thick split pea, so I made this one rather thin by using lots of veggie stock. Once the peas were soft, I added thinly sliced onions and carrots that I had sauteed with thyme, marjoram, and ginger. The soup went fast, but I think there's still a bit left for me and The Gimpy Southerner (yes, he's still quite sore from his accident- see last week's post for details on his fall from grace, er, I mean bike).

At 3pm I still didn't know what the bread was, but I'd bought buttermilk at the store because it seems like nine out of ten quickbread recipes call for it. I put "buttermilk muffin recipe" into Google and came up with these lovely buttermilk oatmeal muffins. I tripled the recipe but instead of tripling the whole wheat flour, I did one cup of whole wheat, one of spelt, and one of all-purpose. I think it made them lighter than they would've been and they are super yummy. It made 3 dozen and we have at least a dozen left. Can you say delish breakfast tomorrow? Yummm!

I think this was my 45th soup. Something like that. We're coming up on the big One Year SS Anniversary Souper Soup Swap (first weekend in May). More details to follow! Have a great week and eat well!

Four P Soup

2009-03-01T18:24:00.001-08:00

Last year, when the Southerner proved that Black Thumb was a nickname from his past and he actually could grow food, I decided I better learn to cook all those veggies he was bringing home so I bought a cookbook called Perfect Vegetables (they didn't have a book called Perfect Squash). It turned out to be a fantastic cookbook and when I heard someone in the grocery store raving over parsnips (I always wondered what those white carrots were), I decided to buy some and give 'em a try since they were covered in the book. They were delicious and now I throw them in my roasted vegetables all the time.

Last week parsnips were on sale so I bought a bag of small, tender ones and this week, when it came time to pick a soup, I got online and did a Google search for "potato parsnip soup". It led me to this blog post by a woman named Annamaria, a Hungarian living in Texas. All I have to say is THANK YOU ANNAMARIA! This is a yummy soup and you should try it. She calls it Cream of Parsnip and Potato Soup, although I dubbed it Four P Soup because it has potatoes, parsnips, parsley, and I added (Hungarian) paprika for colour and also because I had some and it seemed like a good idea since it was a Hungarian soup.

If you look at this recipe and you think, "Oh, I'll use dried parsley and I don't have any lemon" I will say to you that your soup still will probably be pretty good, but it will be outstanding if you make the effort to get the fresh parsley, toss it with the fresh lemon juice, and olive oil and serve as suggested. Because there are a lot of people at SS, I don't really like to stand around giving directions about adding garnish, so I just dumped all the parsley/lemon/olive oil mixture right into the soup and that worked fine.

We had a lot of people today, ten in fact, plus us and it was sort of a madhouse of laughter and good food and good company. Very nice. The Southerner has a gimp in his giddy-up from a spill on his bike, so he got lots of attention, although I'm not sure it was the kind he really wanted! Much of it had to do with how he should take it easy (not in his nature), how ribs take weeks to heal (also not what he wanted to hear), and lots of advice about whether riding his bike home after his fall was really the best choice (too late now). He will recover eventually and in the meantime, he's volunteered to taste anything I care to cook. He's a keeper, that one. I'm glad I get to keep him.

Have a fun week and if you ride your bike, know that it's not necessary to take your hand off the handlebars to wave at the neighbour, thus hitting black ice, and going down. Your neighbour will understand...even if you are a southerner and it's the southern way to wave and be friendly!

Sleepy Sunday Soup

2009-02-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

Soooooo tired...It's so warm in here, and I actually had a glass of wine, which I rarely do...so sleepy...must post something...must...stay awake...zkhax...Oh! I'm awake. I'm awake!

Can I get away with a quick recap and a recipe? Oh, good. Quick recap...breaking news!!! THE NEIGHBOUR MISSED SUNDAY SOUP. She almost made it to the one year mark with a perfect record! Even we don't have a perfect record, but rumour has it she not only missed SS, but left the island (not permanently, but for a short holiday or something). Anyway, that was a big surprise.

We did have a new guest and she will be referred to as The Hairdresser. This is because we met after I saw her picture on Facebook (another friend posted pictures of a party we were both at) and I messaged her to tell her I loved her haircut and I wanted to know who cut it. Turns out that while she's actually in construction, she cuts her own hair. I was so inspired that this week I cut off all my hair (think: more hair than a Marine, but not by much). Anyway, she had to see my haircut (and yes, even trim it up a bit in back and show me how to use some product to make it really stylin' - or it will be after the baldy bits over my ears grow in a little) and that's how we met. Anyway, The Hairdresser is lovely and we are so glad to have met her and we hope she'll come back again soon (and if she's reading this and wondering why I'm calling her that, it's because everyone has a nickname at Sunday Soup).

The Fix-it Guy and The Musician (brown as a berry from a month in Mexico) dropped in as well. And now, here's your recipe since I'm zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......................

Red Pepper Orange Soup with Ricotta Dumplings
(soup is original, based on a few others – dumplings are from The Ultimate Soup Cookbook)
This makes a lot of soup – about 7-8 quarts. You could easily halve it. Half would serve about 6.
3 carrots – peeled, sliced
3 medium red potatoes, diced
2 medium onions, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
6 red bell peppers
Water
Orange juice
Thyme
Salt & pepper
Olive Oil

Halve and seed red peppers, place face down on an oiled baking sheet or glass pan. Roast for 30 minutes at 400. Remove from oven, allow to cool some, and then peel the skins off carefully. Chop roughly. (the roasting step is optional, alternatively, you can just dice the peppers and add to onion mixture and sauté, but the roasting adds flavour).
In a large stockpot over medium heat, cook onions until translucent. Add garlic, potatoes, carrots. Cook 5 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Add Thyme, salt and pepper to taste (you’ll add more later, but it’s good to get a bit in from the beginning). Add roasted red pepper. Cover veggies with water, add canned tomatoes, bring to a boil and reduce to simmer. Simmer until veggies are tender (around 20-30 minutes).
Remove from heat. Mashing the veggies with a potato masher at this point helps, but is optional. Puree with a handheld immersion blender. If you don’t have one, you can use a regular blender and do it in batches, but LET THE SOUP COOL FIRST!!! or it will blow off the top of your blender! Not pretty.
When the soup is pureed, add orange juice. I think I put in about 2 cups, but honestly, I just did it by taste. Also, adjust seasonings at this time. That’s it. Yumm!
The red pepper flavour is very mild. You could reduce the potatoes and add more peppers if you like it stronger.

Ricotta Dumplings
This recipe is from the Ultimate Soup Cookbook, but I’ve altered it just a tiny bit.
1 cup of ricotta cheese
1 egg
½ cup flour
½ tsp salt
3 TBS fresh parsley
Mix all the ingredients together. Bring a large pot of water to boil and then reduce it to simmer. Drop spoonfuls of dough into the water, cover, cook 10 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon to a plate to drain a little. Do in several batches unless you have a very wide pot because they’ll fuse together if they’re crowded into it. Place a couple of dumplings in each soup bowl and top with soup. You could put them into the pot, but they break apart some and so I think putting them in each bowl works best.

New Soup - Take 2

2009-02-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

The Southerner was able to get my pan clean, he did go to the store with me, and he chopped mounds of cauliflower for the new soup. He is a Star! No, I mean a Double Star! No...wait...a Super Star! Yep, that's it!

During the summer, we had a lot of people at Sunday Soup. It dropped off in the fall, and I began to make less soup. However, about a month ago, attendance started to pick up again, so today I made a triple batch of Rachel Ray's Cauliflower Soup. I think the only change I made was that I used plain, unsweetened Silk (soymilk) instead of milk or cream. I made garlic and herb foccacia and roasted red pepper foccacia for the bread.

Another thing that changed over the winter is that instead of people starting to show up around 4:30pm, more and more people have been showing up at 4pm straight up. When no one was here, not even The Neighbour, by 4:35, we were looking at that triple batch of soup and hoping it was really delicious! But then The Neighbour did arrive. And so did The Fix-it Guy & The Fleece Lady, followed by The Real Estate Agent. It was a small group, but a wonderful thing happened. I think that when the crowd is bigger, everyone has one bowl of soup and maybe after a while they'll have a bit more, but most people are cautious about having too much in case there's not enough. Today, however, it was clear that there was a lot of soup, and not many people, and everyone had several bowls! It was great to see the guests choosing the biggest Ugly Mugs and filling them to the top, and then going back for seconds, and even thirds. It made me very happy.

And there's still a lot of soup left, which makes The Southerner happy!

Eat well.

The Southerner hearts me

2009-02-14T15:20:00.000-08:00

For Valentine's Day The Southerner gave me:

Numerous hugs & kisses of consolation after I burned the soup beyond recognition.
Then he disposed of said soup, so that I wouldn't have to be sad (it was nine quarts of pretty spendy soup).
After his nap, he's going to scour the soup pot - no small feat. According to the internet, all you have to do is boil water, vinegar, baking soda, and a tiny bit of soap in the pot for fifteen minutes and the grunge will practically wipe away. After half an hour of boiling, I could barely make a dent in the charred remains. After an hour, The Southerner showed his muscle and scrubbed part of it clean. I have faith he'll be able to get it clean for me after his restorative nap.
Once he's done that, he's going to go to the store with me and buy ingredients for a new soup.
And then he's going to help me make it.

I have to admit, I was feeling pretty badly about the ruined soup, but The Southerner made me feel better by reminding me that everyone burns things once in a while. And my record's pretty darn good considering that tomorrow is our 42nd Sunday Soup and not only have I made a new soup every week, but only one other time have I had to toss the soup and make an emergency pot of something else (and that was a recipe issue, not a mistake).

Soup is usually very forgiving. You can forget about a lot of soups (except the thick or creamy ones) and it's not likely you'll burn it if you come back relatively soon, but this one tricked me. It called for quinoa (a rice like grain, but way yummier and a lot more dear). I added the quinoa and while a little of it floated, the rest of sunk to the bottom. So while my soup was barely simmering, and I was busy making The Southerner a heart shaped pizza for lunch, it was quietly turning the bottom inch of my soup to coal. Maybe I should've left it on the burner and waited to see if I got diamonds!

Even with disasters, you learn something. Next time a soup calls for quinoa, I will cook it separately and add it later, just like rice. And tonight, I will meet my sweetie pie in the kitchen, and we'll steam up the windows (making a new pot of soup).
Happy Valentine's Day!

Tortillas & Tortilla Soup

2009-02-08T21:40:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine suggested that I make her Vegetarian Tortilla Soup for SS today, so I did. It's a fairly simple recipe involving canned tomatoes, sauce, green chiles, seasonings and a few other things. Some of the optional things she suggested are faux chicken and black beans. I do sometimes cook faux meat, but not usually for Sunday Soup. For one thing, it's expensive, but for another thing, some people really don't like it. I think I've used it once for SS, but that's it.

I did add some frozen pinto beans that I had on hand, and when I realized that they weren't enough (I'd doubled the soup recipe), I ended up tossing in a can of drained black beans, and a can of drained white beans. You serve this soup over tortilla chips, top it with cheese and diced avocado. I was concerned about the avos sitting out for three hours, even with lemon juice, so I mashed them up and made guacamole instead (which worked well).

Rather than stand around telling people to put the chips in their Ugly Mugs (that would be what I call the mug collection I got from the recycle centre, not their faces), I just put a handful of chips in each mug before everyone arrived. The soup was so popular that half way through, I added a large can of crushed tomatoes, a can of black beans, and some water and seasonings - just in case. Of course, we now have lots left over, but it looked questionable there for a bit! I put some in the freezer already, and I'm really not worried about the rest as The Southerner thought this was a most excellent soup.

So...now you're wondering about bread, aren't you? Well... Last night I got out my recipe for homemade flour tortillas. Simple! Easy Peasy! Uh-hunh. Guess what tortillas turn into if you don't get them thin enough? Pita bread. Actually, they were quite delicious, but after struggling (for various reasons) with the first batch of 12, I let my dreams of whipping out forty or fifty hot tortillas while everyone stood around marveling, fall by the wayside. I have not given up entirely. I will try again! And The Fleece Lady said she has a tortilla press that she doesn't use because she can't eat wheat anymore. If she can find it, she's going to lend it to me! Yay. Luckily The Southerner came to the rescue by making his famous corn bread. I swear that man will do anything to ride his bike. First he rode to the store for buttermilk and then AFTER he got back he checked to see if we had enough cornmeal.

"Guess I'll have to ride again!" he said cheerfully, shaking the mostly empty container.

Oh, and I know this is a long post, but I do want to quickly say that we had a HOUSE FULL today and it was great fun. We also had three new visitors that I hope to have back again. Wild Iris doesn't get a nickname because she already has such a cool real name. And the other two...well, I shall call them The Farmers, as they are, and they do, and we all enjoy their bounty each summer. One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday morning is ride my bike to the farmgate and stock up on whatever wonderful things The Farmers have that day. Much of their produce has found its way into Sunday Soup and it was so nice to finally have them here! And Wild Iris too. And all you Regulars...gosh, I'm feeling a bit sappy tonight...I often look around my house at Sunday Soup, bubbling over with conversation and food and friendship and I wonder how in the world I ended up so blessed. I hope you are equally blessed. Okay...I'll get off my sappy (but blessed) soap box...or is that soup box? No...no boxed soup here! Until next week...Eat well!

P.S. I may have lost my hat a few weeks ago, but I gained a scarf tonight. If it's yours, I reckon you'll have to come back next week for it!

All's Well That Ends Well

2009-02-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh...another Sunday Soup, come and gone. The Southerner did a few tunes at a benefit for the Gaza victims this afternoon, so we found ourselves racing back to the house from the Theatre Center at the other end of the island at 4pm straight up. We arrived about fifteen after to find The (wonderful) Neighbour in the house, stoking the fire. Soon after, the guests started to arrive and we had a very relaxed and lovely afternoon.

The soup was Lentil Barley and quite delicious. Unlike so many lentil soups, the spices were not curry or cumin, but rosemary and oregano. A simple soup, but I'm too lazy to type up the recipe word for word, so go for it using these minimal directions:
Sautee onion, carrots, celery in a little butter. Add equal parts barley, lentils (around 3/4 cup each), a 28oz can of diced tomatoes, undrained and 6 cups of veggie stock. Season with oregano and rosemary. Add the salt at the very end. That's it, more or less.

The bread was very popular, although there is plenty left for toast, which makes me excited. I might even have to make breakfast for supper (toast, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes) just so I don't have to wait until tomorrow morning to try it that way.

I hope you had a lovely weekend. And just for the record, I'm still really hoping someone will find my hat!!! I did get a new, very hip black one at Artworks, but I'm still really missing that grey one and they don't appear to make it in grey anymore. I know...get out the world's smallest violin and play me a tune.

Eat well!

P.S. The Shakespeare reference is because first of all, I was afraid we wouldn't make it back in time for SS, but we did - pretty much anyway. And the other reason is because at the benefit this afternoon we had the pleasure of seeing two fine actors do some bits and pieces of Shakespeare. Really good stuff. Garry Davies did a variety of monologues including two where he played women - Helena and Juliet, and Antony Holland did a wonderful piece from Merchant of Venice that had everyone sitting on the edge of their seats.

Recipes, experience & a calm mind

2009-02-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

I have lately started using recipes. Sunday Soup has forced me to. By lately, I mean for the last six months or so. When I first learned to cook I studied techniques and then applied them to improve the things I "thought" I knew how to cook. The quality of our food improved quite a bit. Then I started experimenting and discovered I have a knack for combos and creating recipes. I cooked like that for several years.

When we moved to the island and The Southerner started bringing home foods I didn't know what to do with (beets, zucchini), I got the cookbook Perfect Vegetables (which I highly recommend). Sunday Soup forced my hand though...after just a few weeks I realized I needed help with both bread and soup. I am now ADDICTED to cookbooks. While I usually swap some ingredients out, or change something because it sounds odd, I still love using recipes. I think the big change in my thinking is because when I first started to cook, if I didn't have two or three ingredients on hand, then the recipe was useless to me. Now I just sub confidently because I know a lot more about cooking.

For example, this week I chose to make brown bread from The Zen Monastery Cookbook (which is one of the coolest cookbooks EVER!). I thought I had all the ingredients, but when I was adding the molasses, I realized I was a bit short of one cup (I was doubling it), so I topped it off with honey and just a bit of water because honey is thicker than molasses.

Interestingly enough, the recipe says to "pour" the batter into a loaf pan. Well, let me just tell you that I think those monks might've had a little too much of their home brew* when they wrote this recipe because the "batter" was somewhere between a thick muffin batter and cookie dough. I double, and then triple checked the recipe. All good. I scooped the batter/dough into the pans and it turned out fantastic. I did have to turn the oven down a bit after half an hour and the bread was done after 45 minutes instead of an hour.

The thing is, this is how experience helps you use recipes. Five years ago I would've panicked at the density of the batter, wouldn't have known to turn the oven down, would've cooked it for the whole hour, and been rewarded with bricks. But on the positive side, that's also how I learned what to do in this case. It's all about trial and error. Thank goodness The Southerner will eat anything! It makes the failures that much easier to stomach!

Try this recipe. It's delish:
Brown Bread from The Zen Monestary Cookbook
(adapted from The Peaceful Palate)
2 cups wholewheat flour
1 cup white flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk (or soymilk)
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup raisisn

Preheat oven to 350. Sift dry ingredients into large mixing bowl, stir to combine.
Mix milk with molasses in separate bowl.
Add raisins and wet to dry. Stir well to combine.
"Pour" into a buttered loaf pan and bake 50 minutes to an hour

Makes one loaf

*Some monks do brew beer, although I don't think these monks do. I think they're at high altitude and I'm at practically no altitude, so that could've made a difference.

A cracking good time

2009-01-25T20:42:00.000-08:00

Today I rebelled and didn't make any bread! Okay, that's actually a lie. I did make a loaf of bread, but I hid it under a towel because it is our daily bread and wasn't intended for Sunday Soup. Instead, I made crackers! Yes, crackers!

The Southerner and I periodically take a hard look at our diet and try to change a few things to improve it. The truth is, we probably eat healthier than most people, but there's always room for improvement. We do cook almost all our own food and we're vegetarian so even if we do eat out, we haven't had fast food in like...well, since the last time we drove cross country and had to get pizza slices at a rest stop in Wyoming (which I don't recommend). We also hope to never eat another cheese sandwich from Subway, but I digress. Anyway, recently we talked about what we eat and the whole processed food thing came up again. I am not ready to give up on my faux hotdogs, but when The Southerner suggested I try making crackers, I jumped on it.

He thought the dough I use for pizza crust would be good. It's not. I tried it, thinking he might be right, but yeast does not belong in crackers. So I got out my handy How to Cook Everything Vegetarian cookbook (a fave!) and found the recipe for crackers. Soooooo easy!!! And so much fun to make I couldn't stop. After six batches The Southerner finally had to stop me.

"Just because you can make them, doesn't mean you need to supply the whole island!"

Okay, he didn't really say that, but when I suggested making just one more batch, he did roll his eyes. Here are my flavour combos: plain (like an English water cracker), whole wheat and cumin (my least favourite), Parmesan and Italian herb (the best one - made two batches), Aleppo peppers with cornmeal subbed for part of the flour (spicey and yummy), and rosemary and black pepper (a good idea, but it needed more of both seasonings). I highly recommend checking out both this cookbook and this recipe. Or drop by my Facebook page because I wrote it all up there.

In addition to cutting back on our processed food (goodbye potato chips, so long bottled dressing, see ya later Barbara's jalepeno and blue cheese cheet-o-like thingies), we have chosen a few veggies to add to our diet. Being vegetarians, we naturally eat a lot of veggies, but there are some we have avoided because they don't really appeal to us. Bell peppers, eggplant, beets, and sweet potatoes are a few foods that neither of us have ever really wanted to eat, so we didn't.

I can safely say we probably won't voluntarily eat eggplant because it makes my throat itch and The Southerner's not that fond of it. However, lately we've added red, yellow, and orange peppers into our diet, last summer we ate beets from The Fix-it Guy and The Fleece Lady's garden, and today I made Sweet Potato Soup for SS. It was FABULOUS! I may not take any sweet potatoes with marshmallows on Thanksgiving, but I will make this soup again.

It came from The Ultimate Soup Cookbook (Reader's Digest) and let me tell you that this is probably the best soup cookbook I have found. I think I've made about ten soups from it and every one of them was great. I often make alterations, but several of these I've made really close to the actual recipe and they have turned out fantastic. This book is certainly making me look like a better cook than I am. And here's a tip, if you want a copy, try ebay. I got a brand new copy there for $13 plus shipping.

It was a little quieter here this week than last week at Mum & Dad's! The Neighbour informed me that up until last week, we were the only two with perfect attendance, and now I've missed a SS and she's the only one who's been here every single Sunday since May! I said, "Hey! Last week at Mum's, I made four soups and five kinds of bread, plus the soup y'all had here! That's got to count for something!" but she's sticking to her story. So alas, I am no longer perfect. I know, that's a shock to all who know me.

Until next week...eat lots of soup!

Lost - my favourite hat!

2009-01-25T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
I meant to include this note in last week's post, but forgot. When my grandmother arrived at SS she commented on my grey fleece hat being a "chef's hat". I'd forgotten I was wearing it and quickly took it off and threw it in the bedroom that we were staying in for our visit. Well...that also ended up being the bedroom where everyone put their coats. When SS was over, my favourite hat was gone!

If anyone ended up getting home with it and you're wondering whose it is, it's mine! I really love that hat, so I'm willing to trade you some secret recipes for its safe return, no questions asked. If you love it so much you can't part with it (which I totally understand), you can get one right there in Portland because that's where they're made by Cagoule Fleece. Hmmm...I was just over at their site and they're having a sale. I gotta go...

Sunday Soup on the Road

2009-01-20T17:54:00.000-08:00

Hello All! The reason I'm posting late this week is because SS was on the road and I didn't really want to advertise on the internet that we were away from home. We're back now, so now I can tell y'all all about it!

The Southerner and I went to visit The Parents (road trip!). Mum asked me if I would mind doing SS on Friday night since we were scheduled to head home on Saturday, but we decided it would be more fun to change our dates and have SS at their house. It was a much bigger deal than our usual SS here on the island as Mum had invited about sixty people! Although we were sorry they didn't all come, it was a bit of a relief too because that's a lot of soup and bread! As it is, I think there was probably around thirty people and we made four soups and five loaves of bread.

My grandmother, who follows these posts regularly and LOVES soup even more than I do requested French Onion, which I made for her with Swiss cheese toasts to go in it. I made the White Bean with Spinach and Sundried Tomatoes (from a few weeks ago) for the crockpot, and Julia Child's potato-leek soup (fabulous and sooo simple) in Mum's pot. Those are all soups I've made before though, so I had to have a new one too. I asked my eight year old niece what she would like and she said "spinach?", so that's what I made.

She wanted a cream of spinach and I'd just bought that fabulous soup cookbook that I mentioned a few months ago here and sure enough, there was a cream of spinach soup recipe. I have to admit that it is probably not a recipe I could afford to make up here, but since Mum was footing the bill, I jumped all over the opportunity. Plus, because we had three other soups, we didn't have to make a lot of it, just enough. If I served it here as the only soup, I think it would cost me about $30 or so for seven or eight quarts. I have to be more economical than that, but maybe in the summer when I can use fresh spinach that The Southerner grew instead of frozen, I will be able to afford that.

Anyway, it turned out really lovely. It has celery and leeks in it (and spinach, of course) and veggie stock and you puree it and add cream (I used Silk). The unusual bit that made it particularly good was the seasoning. It calls for mint and marjoram, plus the usual (salt and pepper). Very, very tasty.

My cousin Zach, who is also eight, was not impressed with any of the soups (pesky vegetables!), but I promised not to repeat what he said the spinach soup looked like! It made me laugh though, as no one's ever described any of my soups quite that way. To his credit, he did try it, although I think it burned his tongue, so he probably wasn't the best judge of the taste. Poor Zach, he had a hard SS because my friend Dawn brough fancy chocolate bars and he got a mouthful of one of them before anyone told him it had dried mushrooms in it. Yeah...mushrooms! I helped him rinse out the sink after he spit that out! I could feel his pain!!! Luckily, I don't like dark chocolate, so I didn't accidentally eat any. Mushrooms are fine in soup, but in chocolate? Pass.

As for the guests, it was very exciting! It was mostly family, with a few friends for good measure. Hmmm...maybe there was only one friend there, now that I think about it. The other one that was supposed to come called at 7:15pm saying that she'd gone into Ikea at 3:45 and just found her way out again. That's happened to us too, which is why we stay far away from there!

Anyway, there were several branches of the family. My parents, my dad's sisters and some of my cousins, my dad's aunts and some of his cousins, my grandmother, my mum's brothers and sister, my cousins on that side, kids of some of my cousins, my brother, my niece, and of course me and The Southerner. In case you didn't know this, The Southerner is an only child and looked a little dazed by four generations, but he held up reasonably well!

Anyway, it was really fun and on the way home, The Southerner and I decided that we'd try and make a January trip next year and have a big Sunday Soup down there again (don't worry, Mum, we'll visit before then too)! Oh, and lest any of you were worried about people showing up here at home and wondering where we were, we had that covered too. The Brits and The Neighbour hosted a very quiet SS here...well, I don't actually know how quiet they were, but there was only the three of them, and if they were noisy, well...the cats are cool and didn't say a mumblin' word*.

Sunday Soup has taught me a lot of things, but probably the most important is that "it is what it is". What I mean by that is there is no reason to worry if you have enough soup, or plenty of bread, or how many people are coming... You just make the food, clean the house to the best of your ability without it being an all-day process, and you enjoy yourself. I have never run out of soup or bread yet, but I can honestly say that someday I probably will, just because more people come than I have soup for, and when that day comes, I'll just offer everyone another cup of tea and the conversation will go on...that's what it's about, right? Gathering together with people you love and having a good time.

*A slightly mangled line from Hoyt Axton's song Della and the Dealer.

Tuesday

2009-01-18T22:57:00.000-08:00

Hi All.
I will update SS on Tuesday. I'll explain why then. Hope you had a great weekend!

Leave those skins on...

2009-01-11T19:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday when I came home from the grocery store The Southerner and The Fix-it Guy were working on the bathroom drains (because you couldn't really call them drains anymore since they didn't). Actually, The Fix-it Guy was working on the drains and The Southerner was "standing by" just in case. Hehe. Anyway, The Southerner went into the kitchen for a something (probably more tea - standing by is a very thirsty job) and saw the ten pounds of potatoes I'd bought.

The Southerner: Potatoes on sale?
Me: Nope. They're for the soup and guess what? The recipe calls for them to be peeled.
The Southerner: ALL OF THEM!!! You've got to be kidding me!!!!

You see, the reason he reacted so strongly is because if you'll recall, I cannot peel potatoes. I had a major allergic reaction last summer when I peeled potatoes for soup. The Southerner is now the designated potato peeler. From down the hall (and under the sink), The Fix-it Guy yelled out, "Don't peel them! The peelings are the best part!"

The truth is that while I had already decided to adapt the recipe somehow so that they did not all have to be peeled, I had to make The Southerner sweat just a little bit.

Me: They have to be peeled. That's how the recipe works!

He didn't really fall for it though because he knows I've never followed a recipe to the letter in my life. In the end, he was right not to worry because I totally made up the soup. I did have him peel about ten large potatoes. I got sent to my room (office) while he was doing it because ~~I had the audacity to try and explain to him why he was going to cut himself if he kept using the potato peeler the way he was using it~~ the potatoes were making me sneeze, even though he was doing the peeling.

The rest of the scrubbed potatoes I rubbed with olive oil and salt and then baked on a sheet pan at 450 for about an hour. I boiled the potatoes that he peeled and then pureed them with the water and some carmelized onion to make a base for the soup. Then I chopped the baked potatoes, added them to it, added more water, seasonings and a whole lot of shredded cheddar cheese, some chives, and thinned it with a little vegetable stock. Just in case you're wondering why I used ten pounds of potatoes when I wasn't expecting very many people today, it's because I made nearly nine quarts of soup.

I made nine quarts because someone asked me to do Sunday Soup at their house for their family next week and I agreed. Although we spread the word to our regulars that we wouldn't be here, we didn't see everyone this week, so The Neighbour and The Brits are planning on defrosting half of this week's soup (which I intend to freeze tomorrow) and hosting their own SS here, just in case anyone shows up. So essentially there will be two Sunday Soups next week. You're welcome to join us at either of them, but of course you have to know where to go...I can't really post that info here!

Today we had a small, but fun group. There was me, The Southerner, The Brits, The Neighbour, The Fix-it Guy and The Fleece Lady, and The Real Estate Agent (Extraordinaire) here. The bread was the no-knead type, with a garlic and herb ribbon (how's that for fancy? It means I spread it out on the board as dough, brushed a mixture of olive oil, Italian herbs, and garlic paste over it and then rolled it up and baked it as usual), which was quite popular, and a variety of cookies and candies leftover from last week. The only unfortunate thing is that I did not make the time to prepare a casserole, so now SS is over for the week and I am sitting in front of the fire with my feet up, but there is nothing in the oven baking until bubbly. I can hear The Southerner's stomach growling from the other room. Time to forage...

Have a great week!

The Crowd - part deux

2009-01-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

So far so good...it was just a power surge. We're expecting high winds to go along with this wet snow, so you know...I better type fast.

The second part of this post, which you might be reading first because it will post after the one I just hurriedly posted, is about the bread. Last night, after fighting the broccoli into submission, I decided that for my own sanity, I better make the usual standard no-knead bread. I can whip it up in 5 minutes, so I made two loaves. Today, I was feeling better about the soup...you know, got some distance... and so I doctored up the loaves to make them more exciting. I kneaded (despite the no-knead name) garlic relish, cheese, and green onions into one loaf. The other loaf I sort of flattened out into a square and then broke bits of dark chocolate with hazelnuts over it and then I rolled it up and tucked it under itself. Pain au chocolat. Yeah...both breads were pretty popular!

As usual The Fleece Lady could not come without bringing something wonderful (yay Fleece Lady) and she brought a fabulous red pepper dip that I have to learn to make! Yummm...

Oh, and one last bit of news...no, not that it's snowing...ahhh power surge! Quick! The news is that Sunday Soup is going on the road on Jan. 18th. More info later! Have a great week!

The Crowd

2009-01-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

If you've been following SS from the beginning, or you skip down to the very first post and read about how we got started, you will find out that it's based on an idea from the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. In the Betsy books she has a regular group of friends who she hangs out with and they are always referred to as "The Crowd". Today, Our Crowd was here for Sunday Soup. Plus a few newbies. We had eleven friends join us today, and two who were definitely, positively coming and then didn't because...wait for it...because IT IS SNOWING AGAIN. Yes. Again. Here. In western Canada where it does not snow for three weeks in a row. Or even three days. But snow it did, and we've already got several inches and it's STILL SNOWING.

Normally, I don't complain about the weather, but quite honestly, I feel like it's my duty if I want to fit into The Crowd. Apparently, complaining about the weather here is even more popular than hockey! I know, hard to believe, but true. I heard people complain about the snow, the temperature, and even the summer (or lack of it, which is entirely exaggerated) tonight and not one person even mentioned hockey. Hmmm...I wonder if these are real Canadians in our crowd? Now that I think about it, there's me and The Southerner, clearly not from around these parts, The Musician is half & half (Canadian/American), there is The Irish One, and The Brits...I guess it's okay that hockey never came up since probably half of us don't know anything about it anyway. But whoohee can we talk about the weather. In fact, maybe we should refer to it as THE WEATHER since it's such a popular subject.

What? You want to hear about the soup? Oh, okay. Today I made a wonderful broccoli and toasted almond soup. Earlier this week, I made it for supper and The Southerner was so impressed with it that he thought I should make it for SS. Organic broccoli was on sale, so I decided to go for it. Just so you know, steaming enough broccoli to make vast amounts of soup can be done in your big pasta insert that goes in your 9 quart stock pot. The soup itself is easy enough, but I don't have enough big pans, so I was making stock, then transferring it to a bowl while I steamed the broccoli, then transferring the broccoli with some stock to the blender and back to the pot and back to the bowl and into another bowl and then the blender and then...okay, yeah...I pretty much lost control of the soup there for a while. The Southerner did exactly what he should have done...he made a run for it and hid in his office until it was finished.

Oh....power's about to go...posting quickly...more later.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T09:40:00.001-08:00

We hope that 2009 brings you much joy, peace, and soup.

With love, from me and The Southerner.

Sunday Songs

2008-12-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

Today The Musician (okay, I just decided to call Nathan the musician even though there are many other musicians because he doesn't have a nickname and the rest do) and The Irish One played Christmas carols on guitars for the early arrivals. It was really lovely. The Southerner, who was in dire need of either a nap or coffee (settled for coffee since he really doesn't think he can get away with a nap during SS...not that he's not willing to try!), reclined on the couch while they played, enjoying hearing someone else play for a change. It was a really nice beginning to a great SS.

I made a seed bread, which is basically a white bread with fennel, poppy, and sesame seeds with some other thing...I forget. Anyway, I subbed a few things and mine had fennel, poppy, hemp seed (probably illegal down South!), and sunflower seeds. The fennel seed was the prominent flavour and it was lovely. It went well with the roasted vegetable soup.

The soup was super easy...just roast a bunch of vegetables in olive oil, salt & pepper, then add to veggie stock, puree and season. The seasonings I used were celery salt, regular salt, and garlic paste with a hint of cayenne and some aleppo peppers. Yummm! Not spicy at all, but with a tiny kick.

We had a crowd...Us, The Irish One, The Musician, The Brits, The Neighbour, The Newcomer (hi Debbie) and Hawk Owl (she doesn't need a nickname because she's got such a cool real name).

Everyone's gone home now and it's time to move onto the entree...Mmmm...I can smell the pizza baking...it must be time for me to go. Oh, if you want to make the best ever pizza crust, sub 1/2 cup of cornmeal for 1/2 cup of the flour. You can make it very thin then and it will be super crispy. The Southerner doesn't like marinara, so we use bruschetta topping. If you're not having soup, I highly recommend homemade pizza. Or as in the case of The Southerner...soup, bread AND pizza with salad (plus brownies, tea, cookies...etc.). Yep...they're ready! See you next week.

Cabin Fever

2008-12-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

I think that after 16 days of snow, I have a bit of cabin fever. I know I am suffering from it because The Southerner was helping me chop vegetables for the soup and I snapped at him. Granted, he was tossing carrots around the kitchen (missing his targets, by the way), but usually his antics make me laugh. Today was the warmest it's been in a long time and did I take advantage of that and go out for a walk? No...and The Poor Southerner had to pay for my laziness.

I guess that means I'll have to be extra nice to him...maybe make something really yummy for dinner.

One thing I've been doing while I've been snowed in is read a lot of cookbooks. I got some soup ones and some specifically vegetarian ones from the library and there is some good stuff in those books. I've started reading cookbooks like people read magazines (no, not in the bathroom! Ew!); browsing, flagging pages for follow-up, gazing at the pictures.

Here are a few that I like:
THE ULTIMATE SOUP
THE BIG BOOK OF VEGETARIAN
1001 DELICIOUS SOUPS AND STEWS
THE COMPLETE SOY COOKBOOK

Tomorrow's soup is based on one from 1001 Delicious S&S. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Sunday Soup Conference Call

2008-12-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

The snow is deep. The fire is warm and the food is good, but again...the snow is deep. The only one to brave the snowbanks was The Neighbour. I guess technically SS goes for another 49 minutes, so someone else could show up.

About 5:30 we got a call from The Handyman to say their road hadn't been ploughed and they couldn't get out so The Fleece Lady (Handyman's wife... so nicknamed because she makes the best fleece socks ever) was making soup for the two of them in honour of Sunday Soup. The hilarious part was that The Handyman had called not to tell me they weren't coming, but to find out what the soup was and who was here. When I told him White Bean with Spinach and Sundried Tomatoes and he repeated it to The Fleece Lady, there were big sighs of disappointment in the background. Then they heard there was cornbread and they started wondering if maybe they could hike out to the main road and hitchhike the rest of the way. When the Handyman started asking what The Southerner and The Neighbour were talking about I put him on speaker phone so he could join in, which he did. He even sang us a jazzy rendition of Joy To The World. In the end, I had to promise to put away a bit of soup and cornbread for them both.

Someone on The Southerner's photo blog was asking for a good winter soup recipe, so here is the one I made today. It is an original recipe that just popped into my head yesterday when I was trying to think of a holiday coloured soup. All measurements are approximate.

2 cups small white beans*
water to cover
2-2 1/2 quarts of vegetable stock
1 package frozen leaf spinach
3/4 cup sliced sundried tomatoes in olive oil, drained
salt & pepper to taste
1 cup milk or plain Silk (soymilk)

Cover white beans with water and bring to a boil in a 5-6 quart heavy pan (do not salt or beans will get tough). After they've reached a boil, reduce heat and simmer until tender (2-3 hours).

In a separate pot, make vegetable stock (or used canned, but really, it's so much easier and practically free to make it out of vegetable scraps...). Add to beans about an hour into simmering them. Note: If you want your soup to be white, use water and skip the stock, but the stock adds a lot of flavour.

When beans are tender, remove about half of them to another bowl and puree the beans and stock. Add the beans back in along with the tomatoes, spinach and milk or Silk. Salt and pepper to taste. That's it!

*Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to pre-soak beans. If you cook them long enough, they get tender. I never bother anymore and it always works out fine.

Oh, wait! There were two other guests who dropped in too! But they just wanted apples.

P.S. Since we moved to Canada, I have tried to adopt Canadian spellings. The Southerner just called me on "plough" so I looked it up. Apparently you can use either here in Canada, but plow is used most often. However, this is a word I have ALWAYS spelled as plough and I didn't even realize a tonne of people spell it plow until a year or so ago. I guess it's all the British books I read. Doughnut is another word that I just realized that a lot of people spell donut. Dialogue is another (dialog...blah). So while I don't seem to know if I'm a Brit, American, or Canadian, as my father always says, "You know what I meant."