Summertime Soup

Since we recently decided to give Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) a try, we have been inundated weekly with a large amount of veggies (some of unknown nomenclature).  This week, I was lagging behind the using up of the veggies, so I decided to do a clean out the fridge recipe of my own making.  The resulting soup was not bad!  I started with some leftover Rotisserie Chicken, and the veggies you see here:

Not a bad start - for those of you who can't identify the items on the cutting board...neither can I!  Just kidding! They are: onion, garlic (an amazing rare variety that is extremely spicy when raw), zucchini, spinach (another odd variety), kale, collard and turnip greens, and a Yukon gold potato. 

Obviously, since this is a clean out the fridge recipe, you can use whatever veggies you have on hand.  I only used half of each of the greens because I am going to use them for another recipe.


Here's the recipe for the soup. 
Various veggies (chopped)
Rotisserie chicken (skin and bones removed, chopped)
Chicken broth
Salt and Pepper
Oregano
Tarragon

Once you have got the veggies chopped, heat a dutch oven over medium heat with a small amount of olive oil in the bottom.  Add the onions and garlic, let them soften.  Add spices and stir into the onion mixture.
Add the veggies (pay attention to cooking times for the veggies - I added the zucchini much later in the cooking time).  Cover with chicken broth.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cover.  Cook for about 30 to 40 minutes or until veggies are soft.
Add any quick-cooking veggies and chicken for the last 10 minutes of the cooking time.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serve with crusty bread. 

Don't you just love my vague recipes? 

This soup was very good and summery!  Drew liked it so much he drank the broth - always a good sign!

Mmm...Cozy Soup

It happened last night.  I made dinner!  Not just slapping something together like I have been doing for the past three weeks or taking the easy way out and buying dinner out.  No, this was actual dinner and it was good.  It was good to get the cooking juices flowing again...maybe I will keep this thing up!

Dinner for last night.  Lentil with Spicy Italian Sausage (recipe from Bon Apetit January 2010) with French Bread.  The flavors on this one were fabulous and it smelled great while it was getting going.  I left out the parsnips, because what have parsnips ever done for anything?  Drew had gone and picked up some fully cooked spicy hot links from Target (their Archer Farms brand) and they were perfectly flavored, lots of jalapeno bits in there!  The best part, Drew didn't have to spice the soup at all!

On a sad note, I have figured out that my breadmaker is only half useful.  I think there is something wrong with the heating element because it does not bake bread.  It makes a lovely dough, but it is too high-minded to deign to do something like make bread (oh, the foolish pride of machines!).  I have been putting it to good use lately in the dough department and finishing the breads in the oven; but I tried to make a loaf, start to finish in the maker yesterday and it started mocking me just after the dough was prepped (this involes an annoying beeping sound worse than an alarm that must be electronic speak for, "Think again").  Drew agrees with me that this is sad because the house still smells like bread, but there is no bread to be had.  Not to be deterred, I simply had to have bread yesterday; so I ran out to Fresh and Easy and got a loaf of french bread.  I was sad because I could have made my own, but I used the last of my yeast on the doomed loaf.

Anyway, that was a good news, bad news sort of post, but mostly good news because dinner was great!