Nutty Cauliflower Soup

This golden soup has a luscious, velvety texture and subtle sweetness. Start to finish, it's ready in under an hour.

What You Will Need:

• 2-3 tbs of olive oil
• One large onion, diced.
• 2 cups of pumpkin, cubed
• 4-5 medium carrots, sliced
• 2 cups of sweet potato, cubed
• 1 small head of cauliflower, chopped any way you like
• 2-3 tbs peanut butter
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped finely
• 4 cups of vegetable broth, stock or water
• 1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1/4 cup chopped parsely
• salt and pepper to taste
• An immersion blender (unless you have some other method for pureeing large quantities of hot soup!)

Procedure:

1. Sautee the onion in the olive oil until wilted.
2. Add the pumpkin, carrots, sweet potato, cauliflower, ginger, nutmeg and liquid.
3. Simmer until vegetables can be easily pierced with a fork.
4. Turn off the heat and let the pot cool down until it stops bubbling.
5. Using an immersion blender puree everything in the pot. Keep going until there are no chunks of veggies left. Be sure the immersion blender is completely submerged and not tilted, because the soup is still HOT and it will come flying up out of the pot and land on you if you're not careful. 
6. Add coconut milk and peanut butter. Puree again until these are incorporated evenly throughout.
7. Add salt and pepper to taste.
8. Add chopped parsley and stir.
9. Eat!

The Best Soup Ever

I couldn't decide what to call this soup. It is, I suppose, a chicken soup. But it's so much more! I'll never go back to regular chicken soup again. Even my picky child was happy with this soup, veggies and all! The most surprising ingredient, if you're not familiar with seeing it in savory dishes, is peanut butter. I brought the leftover soup to work to share and it was rated 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. I promise it is worth trying!

For extra flavor, you can use the bones and/or carcass of the whole chicken if you've got them. I used the leftovers from a chicken I roasted the night before I made this soup. You can purchase a cooked rotisserie chicken and then use any leftovers for this soup. If you do use bones or the whole chicken carcass, you can pull them out of the soup after they've simmered for a while, before you add back the pureed veggies, allow the chicken to cool a bit, and then pull the meat from the bones and drop it back into the soup.

What you'll need:

• 8 cups of liquid (vegetable broth or chicken broth)
• About 5 carrots, sliced into thin rounds
• 1 large potato, cubed or diced
• 2 cups of pumpkin, cubed or diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• Cooked chicken, about 2 cups of bite sized pieces.
• 4-6 tablespoons of unsweetened peanut butter
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (roasted garlic would be even better!)
• 2 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 1 cup of noodles (optional) I like thin egg noodles best, but add what you like!
• juice of 2 limes
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
• salt, to taste

What to do:

1. Bring your liquid to a boil in a large soup pot.
2. Add the onions, potatoes, pumpkin and carrots. Turn the heat to medium and allow to cook for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.
3. Remove about half of the vegetables from the pot and put them in a food processor or blender. Be careful! The veggies are hot. Do not use a food processor with a fitted lid that seals completely. Steam must be able to escape while you puree.
4. Add the chicken pieces to the soup pot and leave to simmer.
5. To the vegetables in the blender/processor, add about a cup of the liquid from the soup, the peanut butter, the garlic and the chopped tomatoes.
6. Puree vegetable and peanut butter mixture until smooth, adding more liquid if necessary.
7. Return the pureed mixture to the soup pot and stir until completely incorporated. Your soup should be a bit thicker and a beautiful shade of yellow or orange.
8. Add noodles.
9. Simmer for about 10 or 20 minutes longer.
10. Turn off the heat.
11. Add the chopped herbs and stir them into the hot soup.
12. Add the lime juice and stir.
13. Taste the soup and add salt to taste.

Enjoy!

Apple Banana Pancakes

I would like to cook breakfast every morning for my child, but there's no way I would actually get around to doing it. So I've found an acceptable substitute that makes us both happy. I make a big batch of pancakes on a night when I feel up to it. I freeze half and refrigerate half. In the morning, my son takes two pancakes from the fridge, sticks them in the microwave for 10 or 15 seconds, tops them with a tablespoon of maple syrup and chows down. When the half batch from the fridge is done, I move the rest down from the freezer. I know pancakes aren't the most nutritious breakfast, so I mix in some fruit to make them a bit healthier. The pancakes are delicious and so easy to whip up. The recipe below makes about 25 medium-sized pancakes. Enough for breakfast and after school snacks for the week. Sometimes for lunch I make him a pancake peanut butter sandwich!

Ingredients:

wet ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups of milk
• 2 eggs, beaten lightly
  
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter or oil
• 2-3 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 large apple, diced (about 1/8 inch dice)
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla
  

dry ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups of flour
• 2 tablespoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/8 cup of sugar (or to taste)

Directions:

1. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Set to the side.
2. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl.
3. Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until most of the lumps are out.
4. Heat your pan or griddle over medium heat for a couple of minutes.
5. Use a small ladle or large spoon to drop/pour spoonfulls of the pancake batter onto your pan. Be sure to scoop from the bottom of the bowl so you get some apple and banana pieces in each pancake.
6. Leave the pancakes alone until the edges begin to look dry and there are bubbles appearing over the entire surface of the pancake! Then flip.
7. Check that the pancake it done by pressing down gently with your finger. When it's done, the pancake should spring right back when you remove your finger.
8. Enjoy with maple syrup, peanut butter, jam, or with nothing at all!