Soup and Magical Bread

I've been in a food rut lately.  My husband is a consultant and spends some of his time on the road so I'm left to fend for myself which means, rather than cooking a fresh vegetarian meal I'm prone to grabbing a veggie burger out of the freezer or grabbing some hummus and veggies for a quick snack.

With that being said we did combine our efforts earlier this week to make a spicy Curried Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup. Which by the way was AWESOME.

We started with onions – I suggested 1 but I'm pretty sure there were at least 2 since Dan applies the - if one is good then 2 is even better philosophy to the use of onions.  Added approx. 2 lbs of carrots, 2 small sweet potatoes, some curry powder, salt and fresh ground black pepper (since I wasn't watching closely I can't give you the exact amounts – but suffice to say it was spicy) 4 cups of vegetable broth and cooked it until the vegetables were tender.  

We purred it in the blender in batches and then returned it to the pot, adjusted the spices and served it up with a spinach and strawberry salad with balsamic vinegar dressing.  I was tempted to lick my bowl but held off just to be polite.

Later in the week we took an Artisan Bread Making Class. Generally, Dan is the bread chef at our house but I'm trying to expand my horizons. It was a fun class we learned to make a no knead bread.

We started with a basic flour, yeast, salt and water mixture, let it sit for about an hour and then baked it in a 450-degree oven. It looked kind of flat and pathetic when it went in the oven but when it came out they were 1-pound loaves of fluffy hot goodness with a crispy crust.  It was like bread magic!  We came home with 2 hot fresh loaves of bread and dough to make 4 more – I'm thinking the neighbors will be getting gifts this weekend.

I'm committed to getting my spiralizer out this weekend to make some zucchini and carrot noodles and then roast them with onions, pepper and tempeh and get back to real cooking complete with photos.