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.

Rebecca’s 2nd birthday was a smashing success, with splashing, swimming, bubbles and some pretty good food if I do so say so myself.

This is just a quick post to share our simple menu and a few cute photos that I couldn’t resist posting. For our guests, I’ll be sending you the photos of your families in the next few days since I can no longer keep track of who loves having their pictures here, who simply tolerates it and who’s husbands can’t stand it.

An old bed sheet and some daylilies with mint from the garden in your mother’s old vases can do wonders for your porch. Ryan and I made the bunting together last year for her first birthday, We sewed at night, out on the deck in the Toronto summer heat so we didn’t wake her up. 

By using the chalk board as a menu/back drop/cover up for our unfinished reno we were able to accommodate a variety of food restrictions, allergies and vegans. Lots of vegans. 

When we were on a strict elimination diet I would have loved to have gone to a party or picnic where 1st of all Rebecca and could eat something. Its really truly dreadful to go somewhere and not have anything to eat and 2nd to have not had to spend the whole time trying to figure out what I could possible eat.  So we simply kept the menu vegetarian and labeled all the foods based on their vegan/gluten free/soy free/nut free status. I even got to draw cute pictures of carrots.

Salad #1 Our Yogurt Dill Curry Mustard Potato Salad. Not Vegan, but delicious. Also clearly labeled as such.

Salad #2 Peas + Zucchini + Dill + Olive Oil & Lemon Juice is pretty much the best thing in the world. Add Feta if you’d like.  This one was gone in ten minutes.

Salad #4 Quinoa & Chickpeas with beets garlic and mint. Cook your Quinoa, then add chickpeas, then saute with garlic and mint.  Add cooked beets. Voila. Babies love Quinoa.

Last but not least, Salad #5.  Having a large number of nursing mothers in attendance I thought it was only fair to serve up the fennel salad from this post.  Keeping seasonal, we switched the fiddleheads for mushrooms.

 Then 6 toddlers and babies jumped in the pool in their best clothes and giant water-loged cloth diapers.  They all had their bathing suits with them but didn’t give any warning what so ever.

After an outfit change into her pinafore from the lovely bohdi handmade on etsy we had 100% organic Angel Food Cake from my grandmother’s Joy of Cooking. Served with whipped cream, cottage-made jam and perfect Ontario Peaches. We also had some fruit salad and peaches for those who needed an alternative.

 Then there was some of this followed by another toddler wading pool party.

Then some of this. What good little monkeys.  A good time was had by all.

This week I will be sharing all our delicious vegetarian soup recipes from our soup swap.

Enjoy!

Catherine’s lemony-not-like-chilli Black Bean Soup (from Laurel’s Kitchen)

1 1/2 cups black turtle beans
1 1/2 quarts/litres vegetable stock
2 T oil
1 carrot
1 onion
1 potato
2 stalks celery
1 bay leaf
1 t oregano
1/4 t savoury
2 t salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 lemon, thinly sliced

Wash the turtle beans and put them in a saucepan along with the stock and 1 T oil.

Cover tightly, bring to a boil, and simmer for 2 1/2 hours or so, until beans are quite tender.

Chop the onion and saute in the remaining oil until soft. 

Chop the celery, including the leaves. 

Grate potato and carrot on a large grater. 

Add celery, potato, and carrot to onion and cook over medium heat for several minutes, stirring all the while. 

Add the vegetables to the beans, along with the seasonings, in the last hour of their cooking. 

Bring the soup to a boil and lower the heat to simmer until the beans and vegetables are done.

Add the lemon juice

Add lemon slices when the soup has finished cooking.

Makes about 9 cups.