Dr. Kim's Favorite Winter Soup

Wow, I can't improve on this delicious chick pea-leek soup recipe of Dr. Ben Kim's, so I'm just putting the link here for you to check into: http://drbenkim.com/recipeschickpealeeksoup.html

Chicken Soup for the Soul for Fathers--

Send one or more of these free inspirational Father's Day free e-cards from Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul to a father in your life.

Mothers' Day Soups

Mothers are often associated with soup, aren't they? Soup is such a symbol of nurturance (and who do we think of primarily in that instance?) So, is it not fitting to make up a lovely soup on Mother's Day and share it with your lovely mother (or your wife, if you are still getting away with referring to her as Mommy and using Mother's Day as the one day in the year where you really treat her royally in a way that your children can witness).

Here are a few suggestions for nice Mother's Day soups offering variations dependent on their tastes and eating styles, and the outside temperatures.

Chilled Pear and Rose Petal Soup (from the Joy of Soup blog): Hmm. Pretty fancy. Sounds like something you might need a terrine for? And you will probably want to wear something other than your undershirt to the table. And by all means only use rose petals that have NOT been sprayed and that are organic (how do you determine that when buying flowers? I guess you would have to go for your own organically-grown roses-- but we don't have them here on Mother's Day, so that counts us out)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
salt & pepper, to taste
2 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons sliced almonds, toasted
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup edible rose petals
Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the pears and sauté, tossing often, until golden on all sides. Add the sugar, ginger and salt and pepper and stir to combine. Add the chicken broth and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes to meld the flavors.
Transfer the broth mixture to a VitaMix and add the toasted almonds, half and half and 1/4 cup of the rose petals. Puree the soup until smooth.
Chill the soup thoroughly before serving. Garnish with the remaining rose petals. Serves 4

Here is another elegant chilled soup on video CUCUMBER-DILL SOUP-- if you want to make it raw vegan, just use a nut milk with more lemon vs. the buttermilk and yogurt.

Potato-Cabbage Soup for St. Patrick's Day

Here is a lovely vegetarian dish for St. Pat's day-- and no butter either, so I guess it's vegan! But you know, don't you, that I would be using the VitaMix and not some inferior blender :p

Make it a good one!
~Cynthia

Lovers' Soup for Valentine's Day

Most of my soup recipes don't contain butter, cheese or "spirits", but this is a soup for an exceptional time and I'll make the exception. This is an adaptation of a soup recipe in the cookbook called "Blue Moon Soup" by Gary Goss, with amazing illustrations by Jane Dyer.

2T butter
1 small leek, chopped (1 to 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 C chopped chives
1/4 C sliced mushrooms
2 lg sweet potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
1 T cooking sherry or dry white wine OR apple cider vinegar (added when soup has been removed from heat) (optional)
1 tsp curry
1/4 tsp Celtic sea salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 C milk or soy or nut milk
Garnish: 1 cup shredded Muenster cheese, 1/4 C sliced mushrooms, and 1 bar of great chocolate, broken into bite-sized pieces.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
2. Melt the butter in a soup pot on medium heat.
3. Add the leek, chives, mushrooms, half of the sweet potatoes, the sherry if using, curry, salt, and pepper. Saute for 10 min, stirring with a wooden spoon.
4. Add the remaining sweet potatoes and 2 cups of water, and stir.
5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.
6. In Vitamix, blend up half the soup with the milk until thick and silky smooth.
7. Return the blended soup to the soup pot and stir.
8. Place soup crocks on a cookie sheet. Ladle soup into crocks, and garnish. Bake for 15 minutes, until lightly browned and bubbly.
[makes 4-6 servings]

Yes, the chocolate is a surprise-- for anyone who likes Mexican cooking, it is like the yummy mole sauce.

♥♥Have a lovely evening♥♥

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**The image "Love Shack" is courtesy of Lynne Lancaster at StockXpert.

Lazy Perogy Soup

It is cold outside again-- really unseasonal for our gorgeous hunk of Vancouver Island-- so here is my feel-good-on-a-cold-day soup recipe. Please feel free to substitute other things you have in the kitchen for what you might not have that is in today's recipe:

Saute 4 medium onions, chopped
in a large soup pot with 1 T. Extra Virgin Coconut Oil

When the onions are fragrant and translucent, add

2 C. Organic Tomato Pasta Sauce
3 C. Filtered Water
1 C. Natural Sauerkraut (not the kind made with vinegar and cooked to death)
4-10 Perogies (I used the cheddar cheese whole grain perogies with soy bacon bits)
1 Can Organic Navy Beans
Cook the perogies through and serve.

This is plenty salty enough for us, but if you want to add more salt and other seasonings, well, you go....

This is the perfect healthy and comforting quick lunch for the work-at-home folks.
Are you one? Do you want to be one? If you are looking for a business where you can build your health while you build your wealth, and with a fabulous "closed loop system" (meaning you really really are in a home business-- no home presentations, and your training, your organization's training, is all done with the internet and a phone) Check it out here.

Sweet Potato Soup (with Curry & Garlic)

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Here is an heirloom recipe passed to me by my lovely new Facebook friend,
Nancy Pugh, who got it from her friend Helen Heenan, New Zealand, who got it
from her grandmother. That is the beauty of "networking" at its most organic!
I have made a couple of minor adjustments (you guessed it: I used the
VitaMix)

2 med.- lg. sweet potatoes, diced into ~ 1 cm cubes
1 - 2 tsp. curry powder
75 Gm butter (~ 2/3 stick)
2 - 4 cloves, garlic

Cook all ingredients together, low heat to melt butter. Add water to cover & cook together until sweet potatoes are cooked through.
Transfer into the VitaMix cannister and whir until homogeneous (don't drain
before doing that).

Add milk or vegetable stock just before serving, to desired thickness.
May freeze.
Taste improves with age.
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**The use of the word "whirled" is meant to indicate a soup that is fully to partially made up using a Vita-Mix. UNTIL DECEMBER 15, 2008, with each VitaMix purchase from this site, you could win a $50 Gift Card (shipping is free). To learn more about this contest and the amazing Whole Food Machine (10-Appliances-in-One), click here. The Vita-Prep mentioned above can also be purchased at this site if you are a professional (or aspiring) cook.

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**Thanks to Manoel Silva for the photo of the prize-winning sweet potato. Manoel displays his photos at StockXpert at sxc.hu