Pumpkin Homecoming Stew
Made with Ridley's homemade pumpkin purée. Throw the following things into a large pot, in this order, and whatever amount of each seems reasonable: olive oil; onion, chopped; garlic, minced; carrots, chopped; potatoes, chopped; pearl barley; mushrooms, quartered; ginger, grated; pumpkin purée; vegetable broth; a few pinches nutmeg and allspice; bay leaves.
Curried Potato Soup
I was cat sitting for a friend who asked me to eat the bag of potatoes she'd left. So I made a potato soup! From Pam Reiss's Soup: A Kosher Collection, one of my favourite Whitecap soup books.
Ginger-Miso-Basil Pea Soup
My cat friend also owns a NutriBullet, which anyone is welcome to buy me for Christmas, and I found the recipe for this soup in the NutriBullet cookbook. It's more of a purée that you eat over rice, which consists of: frozen peas, veggie stock, green onions, miso, ginger and basil. (From my office basil plant!)
Roasted Eggplant Soup
Part of my coping-with-having-spent-all-my-money-on-a-5-week-US-tour strategy is cooking dinners based on those $1.00 grab bags of vegetables you can get at independent grocers that must be cooked immediately or they will be rotten by midnight. You can almost always find a bag of overripe eggplants, so I consulted Pam's book again for eggplant recipes. This soup is amazing. So rich! So many subtle flavours! It has a couple secret ingredients you wouldn't expect. One of them is tahini.
P.S. If you are making soup DON'T FORGET THE BANNOCK!
