Mmm Moosewood.  Mollie Katzen’s Classic cookbooks are all well worn around these parts.  I’ve mentioned them here before, but somehow forgot to share our favourite soup during last year’s soup swap recipe posts.  

The Moosewood Vegetable Soup from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest
and it’s many variations are a regular part of our fall meals around here.  There’s a big pot of it boiling on the stove right now for our dinner so there’s no time like the present to share this classic.

As the title suggests, this is a basic vegetable soup recipe with  bunch of great suggestions on how to mix it up.  This is our favourite way to make it, with a gazillion mushrooms and a rainbow of carrots, but it changes seasonally.

Boil together until the potatoes are just tender:

4 cups vegetable stock
1 large potato sliced thinly
a dash of sea salt

Next you’ll need


2 1 1 1 1tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 large white or yellow onion chopped
1 large clove of garlic crushed
1 teaspoon of salt
4 carrots, we use a mix of orange and purple carrots
a handful of button mushrooms
a bunch of enoki mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon each; thyme, savoury, marjoram, basil
freshly ground pepper to taste

Heat a heavy skillet, add butter, olive oil, onions, garlic and salt and sauté on medium heat for 5 minutes or until onions clear. Add the remaining finely sliced vegetables and herbs.  Continue stirring for 8-10 minutes.  Add the skillet full to your pot of stock and potatoes. Simmer for another 20-30 minutes.

Before serving we add little italian soup noodles, especially the alphabet ones.  This is how my mother made it and now how we make it for our family. 
You need to cook the noodles separately or else its a big mess.  So cook one cup of soup noodles until al dente. Drain, rinse and put them in the bowls.  Serve the soup on top of the noodles, mix gentle and enjoy.

We’re sending some over to a some friends with new babies, so we send the noodles separately with the instructions written on the lid of the jar.
Now I’m off to eat some.  I can’t wait for a reasonable dinner hour.

Mac & Cheese, an essential autumn comfort food is really not much harder to make for real than out of the box.  The recipe our family uses started out with the Moosewood version but has changed a bit over the years.  I highly recommend any of Mollie Katzen’scookbooks; the recipes are delicious, vegetarian and very easy to follow.  I grew up with The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and personally don’t think you should even attempt vegetarianism without it.  Well, the good sort of vegetarian, not the kind in 1^st year college where you eat vegetable flavoured Mr. Noodles and bread for dinner every night.  Or Kraft Dinner for that matter.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Butter up a pyrex baking dish.

In the food processor whizz up the onion and then set it aside. Next you need to combine the cottage cheese, the milk, and the spices, mix them up in the processor. Grate your cheese right into your mixture.  Throw the onion back in.  Pulse a few times then pour onto uncooked macaroni in a mixing bowl. You’ll switch from chopping blade to grater and back again.

Once everything is nicely coated, pour into your buttered baking dish.

Here it is, a little overdone, but delicious and cheesy.  At my house I insist that we eat at least one vegetable with it, but really that’s your call.

Roasted Brussels sprouts go really well with it.

If you don’t have a food processor you should get one.  But in the meantime; chop up your onion, grate your cheese and use a blender and this recipe will work just fine.