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Here at the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome. Recipes are enjoyed, but you can just take a picture of your hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate at last week’s football game. That’ll do just fine.In other words, the Food on Fridays parameters are not at all narrow. I think of it as a virtual pitch-in where everyone brings something to share; even if the content of one item is unrelated to the rest, we sample it all anyway and have a great time.When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button (the big one above or the new smaller option at the bottom) to paste at the top of your post and join us through Mr. Linky.Here’s a Mr. Linky tutorial:
Write up a post, publish, then return here and click on Mr. Linky below. A screen will pop up where you can type in your blog name and paste in the url to your own Food on Fridays post (give us the exact link to your Food on Fridays page, not just the link to your blog).You can also visit other people’s posts by clicking on Mr. Linky and then clicking participants’ names–you should be taken straight to their posts.Please note: I return when possible during the day and update this post by hand to include a list of the links provided via Mr. Linky. If I can’t get to the computer to do so, you may access them all by clicking on the Mister Linky logo.
Food on Fridays Participants
Food on Fridays with Ann
When the temperature goes down, I start to monkey around with soup concoctions.
Tonight’s combination turned out particularly well—the Belgian Wonder, who grew up with soup as a dietary staple, praised the blend and balance of flavors. “Very smooth, very tasty, very healthy,” he said. He took two servings and set aside some for lunch.
Here’s what it looked like in the pot. It uses all orange veggies.
I’ll do my best to explain it below.
Creamy Harvest Soup
Ingredients:
- 2-3 T olive oil (I just poured a little in–I guess that’s about what it was)
- 1/4 C diced onions (at most–I have to go easy on the onions)
- 1 or 2 carrots, diced (I was using baby carrots, so I’m estimating)
- 2 cans chicken or vegetable broth (vegetable broth makes this vegan)
- 1-2 C water (maybe more–enough to cover the veggies when cooking)
- 1 butternut squash, cut into pieces (you can cut it up raw or pre-cook slightly to soften it in the oven or microwave)
- 1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed or diced (cooks faster if diced)1/3 to 1/2 C canned pumpkin (I had some left from baking muffins; you could make this recipe without it)
- Additional broth to thin out as desired
- Salt to taste
Instructions:
- In a large pot, cook carrots and onion in oil until onion is soft (carrots don’t have to be cooked through yet).
- Add broth and then add squash and sweet potato.
- Add water to cover.
- Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer until veggies are soft.
- Add pumpkin (if you have some–not too much, though, or it will taste too pumpkin-y).
- When soup is slightly cooled, puree in batches using the blender; or it’s easier to use a hand blender to puree the soup right in the pot.
- Add water or additional broth, stirring until soup is desired consistency (I like my soup pretty thick, but some people like it thinner–you can experiment and decide what you prefer; after blending, this soup was very thick, and even I added a lot of water).
- Salt to taste.
If you have some, put a dollop of cream or half-n-half in the soup when you serve it. But it’s delicious without, so don’t sweat it if you don’t have any on hand.
Serve with a salad and thickly sliced multi-grain bread.
Food on Fridays p.s.
I scored big with a Kroger manager’s special: crème fraîche was on sale. Wow, was it good in this soup!
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What a healthy, delicious, very fall-like soup. Sounds great!
What a delicious way to get your vitamin A!
So creme fraiche is the magic ingredient? I’ll try it, thanks!
e-Mom @ Susannah’s Aprons
Looks delicious! I have most of those ingredients in my pantry! Seems perfect for this dreary, cold and damp weekend!
Thanks for sharing!
We are having lots of soups at our house too. Thanks for hosting!
~Liz
mmmm….I can feel the comfort in my tummy already. Thanks.
Sounds awesome and delish! I love soup too, but the rest of the family wants steak! The kids get their love of steak from their dad. So, I have decided to offer a compromise. They can have steak, albeit a very small portion, along with soup, salad and some home made rolls or bread.
I’ll bet they go with my offer. I can usually get some very cheap steaks in the discount section of my Smiths/Kroger store. They never used to offer ‘specials’ but now they are. It works for us. We usually have a day or two before the sell by date, so I can use them or freeze them. But I think we should cut down on our portion size of the meat and go with more healthy with the veggies………………
Thanks Ann for a great soup recipe. Thanks for hosting.
Love, Shari
That looks like something that would go really well with a panini from Panera. 🙂
Looks delicious! I’m going to try the vegan version. Thanks for sharing. 🙂