Easy Fennel Soup

This soup was easy to make and fun! I had never worked with fennel before. It is quite delicious! I saved some for later to snack on raw. Fennel is quite exotic looking with it's huge edible onion-like bulb, bright green foliage that looks like dill, and fibrous stalks that look and cut like celery. The flavor of it is like licorice, only it's healthy! When you cook it down in soup with the beef, the fennel's flavor becomes so mild and comforting. This soup was so warm and satisfying Anthony went back to the stove for seconds!

Easy Fennel Soup:

5 Cups Water

1 Lb. Ground Beef

2/3 Bulb of Fennel

2 Cups Egg Noodles

Salt & Pepper

1. Bring 3 cups water and ground beef to a boil.

2. Chop fennel and add to water and beef.

3. Add noodles and 2 more cups of water. Salt and pepper to taste.

Sweet Potato Chili

I just love using my own homemade processed ingredients! Today I incorporated half of a bowl of leftover homemade sweet potato soup from last night into a delicious vegetarian chili for my lunch! I liked the outcome of my sweet potato chili even more than my savory sweet potato soup.

Sweet Potato Chili:

1 cup Savory Sweet Potato Soup

1/2 can of Red Kidney Beans

1/2 Onion

Salt

Cayenne Pepper

Thyme

Savory Sweet Potato Soup

I wanted to make something with the sweet potatoes in the bottom drawer of my fridge. First, I thought of making a soup out of sweet potatoes and succotash. My second thought was instead making a soup with sweet potatoes and red kidney beans. The latter seemed preferable since it would lend itself to being more savory than the former which with corn would be pretty sweet. I began making my soup but ran out of room for the beans when I poured a third of a gallon of spoiled milk in the recipe. The soup was great for something new and different.

First, I peeled the ginger and onion and put them through the juicer. Next, my dear husband gave me a hand chopping the sweet potatoes. They are a little difficult to manhandle. Then those choppings also went into the juicer.

Juicing the sweet potato proved slightly eventful. The machine balked at one particular chunk of sweet potato so I ran it back and forth a couple times to unclog the machine (the helpful advice of my husband). I poured both the juice and the pulp into a pan and then added milk. Upon cleaning our juicer while the soup cooked I found a thick 1 in. x 1 1/2 in. sized piece of sweet potato still whole.

While I was shooting photos of the pot of soup cooking on the stove, a volcano began forming in the pot. I quickly grabbed the pot, put it on the back burner then turned down the heat. Not a drop of soup was lost in the incident.

The overall flavor of this sweet potato soup was not unlike some curries I've had at a Thai restaurant, pretty, sweet, and savory. The fresh ginger and onion in the soup were so overwhelming in a good way that I hardly needed salt and pepper. Upon adding these two however, this soup did become even more savory. We crumbled toast on top for texture and balance. 

Because of the smashing success of my flavor combination, I can't wait to use the leftovers from this meal! I might try making a chicken sweet potato curry with the rest of the soup, and then put that over rice. 

Savory Sweet Potato Soup:

2 Sweet Potatoes

1 Onion

1 Piece of Ginger

Water

1/3 a Gallon of Milk

Potato, Carrot, Broccoli Soup

Ingredients:

1/2 Onion

Water

4 Medium Potatoes

4 Medium Carrots

1/2 Head of Broccoli

Milk

Salt & Pepper

Thyme

Egg-drop Gumbo: Chinese American Southern Fusion

Ingredients:

1/2 Onion

1 can Seafood Stock

3 Jumbo Eggs

1 can Okra, Corn & Tomatoes

1/3 can Hunt's Tomato Sauce

Salt & Pepper

Non-traditional Fusion: Asian Italian Soup

On the last trip to the store I bought some rice noodles. This evening I asked my husband if he wanted fried rice or spicy noodles for dinner. He said spicy noodles. But then I told him I didn't have any inspiration for making spicy noodles. I couldn't think of what to put with them from what we had on hand for dinner. I began thinking of my options for fried rice. I remembered however that we had eaten a sort of rice recently. I went back to plan a, spicy noodles. I went to the cupboard and pulled out the rice noodles. We didn't really have the right ingredients to make spicy noodles. Then I drew a blank. I went to the fridge and pulled out some leftover tomato sauce. I dumped it in a pan. Then I added water. Next, I added rice noodles. Finally, I added honey roasted peanuts, balsamic vinegar, and cayenne pepper. It worked. Dinner was tasty.

Chunky Curried Vegetable and Rice Soup

I wanted to make a soup that didn't have saturated fat in it. I used white rice, water, a can of diced tomatoes, half of a bag of frozen vegetables, fresh chopped celery, curry, salt, and pepper to make this soup. I made banana muffins to accompany the soup. The sweetness of the muffins helped balance out the spiciness of the soup. Anthony and I really enjoyed the combination.

The next few days we enjoyed the leftover soup. The rice had absorbed the liquid of the soup turning it into more of a rice pilaf. We stuffed this rice pilaf in soft tortillas.