Broccoli Bisque (vegan)

I rediscovered an old favorite soup recipe today.  I will cut right to the chase.  I don't know about you, but  I often find my self scrolling through blog posts just to get to the recipe.  So I won't go on any long tangents and just get right to the soup goodness.
 I hope you enjoy this hearty, filling, delicious soup. Cheers to warm soups as the chilly winter settles in!

Broccoli Bisque (Vegan)
**adapted from "Vegan World Fusion Cuisine"

5 cups veggie stock
3 1/2 cups broccoli
1 onion
1 1/2 cups raw cashews
3 cloves garlic
1 TBS Herbamere seasoning (optional)
sea salt (to taste)
dill (to taste)
 
Lightly sauté onions and garlic.   Add stock and broccoli.  Allow to cook until broccoli is soft, about 10-15 minutes.  Remove from heat to cool.  Once cool add everything to blender and puree. (I have done this in the past with just a regular blender). 

A couple 
extra thoughts....
*I just pulled out some frozen broccoli for this but fresh could work as well.  I would use the broccoli stems as well.
*If you plan ahead, soak the cashews which makes them easier to blend and digest, especially if you don't have a high power blender. 

Miso Soup

Miso soup is one of my favorite "go-to" soups during the winter.  It is my vegetarian version of the healing, comforting chicken noodle soup.  It is a soup that is pretty simple in taste but does wonders for digestion. It is my soup that I make up when we are sick with a cold or flu or have upset stomaches.  It really is a comfort food.  Simple. Easy. Healing.

We aren't big soy fans around here but I do use tofu from time to time and I do like miso.  When buying miso it is important to buy naturally fermented miso.  Even amongst many nutrition gurus that are anti-soy, most will say that fermented soy is different and has healing properties.  Now I still use this in moderation, as my tub of miso will sit in my fridge for a rather long period of time, buy hey it's already fermented so I figure I am just adding to the process, right??  By being naturally fermented the miso contains live enzymes that aid in the digestive process and provide healthy probiotics, which is what makes it so beneficial when given to someone that is sick.  It is easy to digest and doesn't have a strong flavor.

Miso itself has a salty and slightly sweet taste.  Miso is made from a variety of beans and/or grains and because of that there are different types and shades of miso.  The rule of thumb is, the ligther the color the lighter and sweeter the taste.


The other thing I love about this soup is that it contains sea vegetables.  I went through a season years ago where I was determined to like seafood.  I tried and tried but every time I tried I was throughly repulsed and just couldn't get past the texture and taste.  I finally gave up my quest and realized I just don't like seafood. Period. Well as I have studied nutrition I continue to stumble across research on sea vegetables and all of the health benefits of including them in a whole foods diet.  So a few years ago I began another quest.  I was going to eat sea vegetables! Well wouldn't you know, I can't choke these down either.  I can smell them a mile away and it makes me cringe. Alas I don't like sea veggies either and that's ok. BUT I love miso soup and miso soup recipes call for a sea vegetable of some kind, so I have found a little trick.  I use a strip of kombu while it's boiling to at least get some of the benefits of the sea vegetables and then when the soup is finished I take the strip out and toss it.  So if you find yourself cringing at the thought of sea vegetables there is a little trick to help you out! For the seafood and sea vegetable lovers out there, just follow the recipe.  :)

Miso Soup
(adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks, "The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook")


5 1/2 cups water
2 TBS Chopped Wakame or 1 strip of Kombu (that you can later toss!)
2 Carrots thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced
4 Green Onions, thinly sliced
1 cup chopped kale, spinach, beet greens, swiss chard, etc...very finely cut or chopped
1/2 cup uncooked pasta (traditionally it is noodles but I use whatever I have on hand and it's great)
8 ounces of tofu, diced
2 TBS Miso Paste
***Optional***1 TBS Parsley
(Parsley aides in digestion and quite honestly it covers up any Kombu taste but is not a traditional part of Miso Soup!)


Place water and sea vegetable in medium-size pan.  Cover and bring to boil over high heat.  Add remaining ingredients and simmer uncovered 15 minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in miso. 

 Enjoy! Hope it helps if you find yourself or your little ones recovering from a cold, flu, or upset tummy!

***I sometimes will add thinly chopped celery as well just for something different. 

Black Bean Quinoa Soup

 

Lately we've had a lot of cool, damp weather, and I've been craving stews and soups.  I could live on soups and stews this time of year.  I just can't seem to get enough.  Something that is fairly easy to make and so very warming.  This Black Bean Soup is a popular one at our house.  Sometimes people ask how can you possibly get enough protein being vegetarian?  Well soups like this are a powerhouse of protein!


Have you tried quinoa? It's an amazing little whole grain.  Well actually it's officially a seed not even a grain.  Dr. Weil says quinoa is high in magnesium  which helps relax blood vessels, resulting in fewer headaches for migraine sufferers and decreased risk of hypertension and stroke. It is also a good source of manganese, iron, copper, phosphorous, vitamin B2 and other essential minerals, and has the highest protein content of any grain. It is especially high in lysine, an amino acid that is typically low in other grains. Quinoa's protein is complete, containing all nine essential amino acids - a rarity in the plant kingdom. Quinoa is gluten-free and easy to digest: a must-add to your culinary repertoire.

Quinoa also makes great baby cereal. For small babies grind the quinoa in blender before cooking and then cook with appropriate amounts of water.  Typically it's 1/4 cup of dry grain to 1 cup of water for making a baby cereal.  For a little bit bigger baby, cook quinoa according to directions and then serve like you would oatmeal, with some extra add-ins.  I used to add avocados, pureed greens, homemade applesauce, or anything thing else creative that I had available.

This soup can be a great soup for a baby that has already been introduced to the foods in the recipe.  It's mostly pureed so easy to eat and not a lot of chewing. Great way to introduce some spice and multiple flavors to those kiddos.  It's great for adults alike.  I love this soup.


Black Bean Quinoa Soup


2 TBS Olive Oil 
2 medium onions, chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
2-4  garlic cloves
1 tsp ground cumin
4 cups cooked black beans (or 2  15-ounce cans)
3 cups vegetable broth
3/4 cup finely chopped kale (or other leafy green of choice)
1-1 1/2  cups cooked quinoa (the more you add the thicker it becomes)

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onions and bell peppers.  Cook until onions are lightly golden.  Add garlic and cumin and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Add the broth and 3 cups of beans and bring to a boil.  Add kale.  Reduce the heat and simmer until flavors blend, approximately 10 minutes.
 
Puree mixture in blender and return to pot.  Add the remaining 1 cup of beans and quinoa.  Simmer for several minutes to heat through.

Top with fresh cilantro and avocado.  I've also added some fun new vegan cheese that I've been making that I will post on the Pint Sized Foodies Facebook Page real soon.

Might also be paired nicely with some vegan cornbread muffins. These are a hit every time I make them.  I usually adapt the flour to a gluten-free mix of flours, the milk to almond milk, and the sugar to sucanat.  But really you can play and adapt as needed.  They really are amazing!

I hope you enjoy some warm, tasty goodness.

Squash & Sweet Potato Curry Stew

As the cooler weather settles in I get excited for hearty stews and soups.  Foods that provide a more warming effect on the body.  During my second pregnancy the majority of my pregnancy was in the fall and winter months.  I lived on soups and stews.  That's all I wanted.  It didn't help that I was carrying my sweet little girl high and it never felt like I had room to eat.  I (along with my hubs and a few friends) started to worrying that this baby was going to be a little, under developed peanut because that's honestly all I ever wanted to eat the majority of my pregnancy.  My first trimester was in the summer and well I was just too sick to much at all. So then that left me eating soups from October to March.  Nourishing my growing baby with soups.  Even my mid-wife was a little skeptical that I was getting all my nutrients in. I assured her I was but I did have my own doubts, to be honest.  I just knew I was craving soups like crazy. They were easy one pot meals.  I could get creative and add all kinds of things to them.  There's a lot of variety to play with when making soups.  Now at the time my husband and then 1 year old would not have agreed.  They were on soup burnout, while I was happily indulging in new soup recipes daily and couldn't get enough.  Well my sweet little Sydney girl arrived in March weighing in at a whooping 8 pounds 15 ounces! Whoa! Nearly 2 pounds bigger than my first.  So much for my malnourished growing baby! I think we were all completely surprised.  She looked like a 2 month old when they handed her to me.

So I share this story with you to tell you that you can create powerhouses of nutrition in stews and soups.  Think of adding whole grains (quinoa, rice, barley, millet, bulgar..), tofu, tempeh, various vegetables, spices, and herbs to soup recipes to give them a creative or fresh feel.  Soups can be an amazing vehicle of nutrition for you and your family. Even with little eaters they go over well.  The veggies in soups are soft enough that they make for great finger foods and start to expose babies to a little bit of variety of spices.

I wanted to share one my favorite stews I created this fall.  So hearty and warming.  We loved it.  Well all except my littlest one.  She prefers not to eat soup.  It's funny really. Maybe there's something in her that just cannot handle the thought of any more soup even though her little body was built on the stuff!

Well I hope you enjoy a hearty stew and cozy evening in!


Squash & Sweet Potato Curry Stew

1 onion, finely chopped
1  14 ounce package extra firm tofu
1 large sweet potato
1/2  medium sized butternut squash, cubed (mine was already cooked)
2 cloves garlic
1 3/4 cups vegetable stock
1 can coconut milk
2 cups diced tomatoes
2 cups garbanzo beans (canned or already cooked)
3 cups finely chopped spinach, kale, swiss chard, or other leafy greens
Medium head of broccoli

1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
sea salt to taste
chopped fresh mint

In a skillet, add oil and cook tofu until lightly brown.  In stock pot, add oil and cook onions and garlic. In stock pot, add sweet potatoes, squash, curry, cinnamon, ginger, and sea salt.  Saute' for 1-2 minutes until squash and sweet potatoes are covered with spices.  Add veg. stock and coconut milk.  Cover and allow to come to a boil. Add broccoli and tofu and then reduce heat to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until veggies are tender.  Stir in tomatoes, garbanzo beans, and greens. Simmer for another 5-10 minutes.    
Garnish bowls with chopped fresh mint.  Eat as is or over a already cooked grain.  I just used some brown rice I had leftover in the fridge and added it right in with the soup while it was simmering.

Chipotle Corn Soup

This summer my husband and I did a week of raw food.  We did it mostly for fun and as a gentle little cleanse on the body.  I get real excited about stuff like this because it challenges me and encourages me find new recipes and experiment with food in different ways.  Sometimes I feel like I get stuck in a rut with cooking and need some new freshness breathed in.  This did exactly that.  It was glorious! We felt great and didn't actually realize how great we felt until we went off of it and started re-introducing some cooked foods back into our life.  Whoa!

In the nutrition world, raw food diets are becoming quite the craze.  The folks following this way of eating are called Raw Foodies.  It's great. I am intrigued by it.  There are some fabulous websites and cookbooks (I guess it would be an un-cookbook).  The idea is that the enzymes in the food are destroyed when cooking it and by eating raw so much more nutrients and minerals are intact.  It's a great theory and I am intrigued by all the crazy raw recipes out there but I also know it's only good for me, for a time and season. 

I think summer is an amazing time to experiment and eat raw.  My girls love raw food.  One example is, I was getting pretty tired of zucchini this summer and trying to figure out what to do with my abundance of it.  I really am not a fan of cooked zucchini and neither are my girls.  It's great in baked goods but really I didn't want to be inside baking this summer so we started calling them zucchini pickles and my girls gobbled them up raw.   I really realized during this week that my kiddos do have a preference to have most of the summer veggies raw.  They tend to be a little pickier when the veggies come on warm dishes.  Raw they tend to gobble them up.  Now I know this will shift now that the weather is cooling down and we are all desiring more warming foods.  It's an interesting thing to start noticing what your body is craving and desiring as the seasons change.  Also to take a walk at your local farmers market and see how the produce changes as the seasons change. 

As for raw food, I think it has a time and place in my opinion.  It's great to experiment and add more raw food to your diet but I think as the cooler weather sets in it doesn't do our body a great service by eating all raw, cool foods.  As temperatures begin to drop we naturally crave warming foods. Now perhaps if your living in Hawaii this is a different story for you! But I think it's really important to get in tune with the rhythms of our bodies and of nature.  Most of us aren't eating summer squash in January nor are we craving hot soups in the middle of the summer.  It's good for foods to change throughout the year.  That is one more reason why it's so fabulous to support your local farmers market. 

So all that said I really started this post to share with you one of my favorite soups I discovered while doing our week of raw food.  It was middle of the summer when we did all "raw week" so we ate this cool.  In Michigan our temperatures are all over the place lately.  We haven't quite settled into the full swing of fall and yet the intense heat has passed.  I saw some fresh corn at the market this morning and thought of this soup.  When really good quality corn has just been picked it's so sweet and tender you can eat it right off the cob raw.  It's light and refreshing.  Not to heavy, which makes this soup great paired with a salad or other veggies, perhaps kale chips.  My girls enjoyed this as well the second time I made it.  The first time I added a bit to much chipotle and it was to spicy for them and my husband!

I found this recipe on Rawmazing.com.  Great resource for raw food recipes....especially salads and desserts! I tweeked it a bit and this is what I came up with.

Chipotle Corn Soup

• 4-5 cups fresh corn (approximately 6 ears)
• 1 1/2 cups water (filtered)
• pinch of  chipotle (can adjust to taste)
• pinch Himalayan salt (or sea salt)
• pinch smoked paprika (optional)

1. Place all ingredients in blender. Blend until well combined and creamy.
2. To have a smoother consistency strain through strainer (you may have to assist the liquid through the strainer by stirring it.) (we didn't strain it and I thought the texture was fine)
3. Serve topped with a pinch of the smoked paprika and/or guacamole.
4.  Can serve at room temperature or warm slightly on stove if your not concerned about it being truly raw!

Enjoy some of the last little reminders of a beautiful summer!

Fresh Roasted Tomato Soup

Have you been to a local farmer's market lately?  This is one of my absolute favorites times of year.  The sun is shining, we are practically living outside, and the amount of fresh, local produce is just pure amazing!  If you wandered along the aisle at any farmers market as of late, you would have surely noticed the amazing abundance of tomatoes.  All different shapes, sizes, and colors.  Traditional and Heirloom varieties.  It makes my mouth water every time I am present at the market.  We have a little backyard urban garden with several tomato plants, and yet I still usually end up coming home from the market with more tomatoes.  My girls are slightly addicted to cherry tomatoes.  In fact, rarely do any of our garden's cherry tomatoes make it inside.  The girls just stand out there and pick and eat them.  Snack time in the garden.  I won't argue with that!

This past weekend we had a couple cooler, rainy days.  It was a nice change of pace to just snuggle on the couch with the girls and relax a bit.  I noticed though that I wanted something a little more warming for dinner.   So I decided to create a tomato soup from the fresh tomatoes we had sitting on our window sill.  It's was fabulous.  Local, fresh, and perfect for a cool, rainy Saturday evening.

Fresh Roasted Tomato Soup

~6 large tomatoes
(I used an heirloom variety along with a couple traditional varieties I had sitting on my window sill)

~1 onion, chopped
~4 cloves of garlic
~3 TBS Rice flour (or flour of choice to basically help thicken)
~2 cups of vegetable broth
~1-2 TBS Succant
~Fresh Basil to taste

• Slice tomatoes and arrange on  jelly roll pans. Add garlic. Lightly drizzle with olive oil. 
• Roast tomato and garlic mixture at 300 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.  (Enjoy the AMAZING smell!)
• Remove tomatoes from oven and allow to slightly cool
• While mixture is cooling, saute onion.  When onion begins to slightly change color, add flour and mix well.  Slowly begin adding vegetable broth until mixture becomes smooth and without lumps of flour.
• Puree tomatoes and vegetable broth mixture and succant in batches, until all combined. 
• Warm entire mixture and allow flavors to simmer. 
• Top with fresh basil (I had some purple basil left from our CSA share that week and it was divine!)

 I served this with a special treat of grilled goat cheese sandwiches.  My girls LOVED it. The freshness of the soup was unbelievable!  If another rainy, cool day settles in, I hope you and your kiddos can enjoy a garden fresh soup that warms and comforts you.  Enjoy!