soup – Gabriela Maria

Kale Potato Soup

March 4, 2023March 4, 20231 Comment

Today’s blog formatting may be wonky as I am currently without a computer to do proper formatting updates. Thank you for your continued support!

It’s been two weeks since my last post and a lot has happened since then.

I received my Capstone project which I’m really looking forward to. I think I have a great team, and a great project, so I’m looking forward to getting started! I also received the details for my next job rotation. I’ll be switching in April and I’m also very excited for that opportunity.

In my personal life, I’m currently in Costa Rica. A friend of mine is celebrating his birthday and wanted to spend a week in Costa Rica I was invited to join. We’ve only been here for one day, but we did a Night Hike last night. Very cool and very interesting. We saw a sloth! And lots of bugs. And now I’m bugged out.

This week I’m sharing a recipe that part of the Color Series for March! For March I picked the color green for St. Patrick’s Day of course. I made a Kale Potato Soup which was delicious. It was topped with bacon and sour cream.

This recipe is from a magazine I had found last year, but recently spotted it again at my local grocery store. I’m unsure of the magazine name, but it referenced Easy Soups & Stews with a big soup bowl on the front of a white background. It’s easy to spot!

Recipe List:

10 cups kale
1 3/4 lbs Yukon potatoes, peeled and diced
3 slices bacon, chopped
1 leek, halved and sliced
2 cloves garlic
4 cups chicken broth
1/4 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp fresh rosemary
Salt and Pepper
Sour cream

Recipe Directions:

Cook bacon until crisp, about 5 mins. Remove.
Add potatoes and leek and cook until slightly softened, about 3 mins. Add garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. Cook until browned, another 2 mins.
Add broth and 4 cups water and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for 15 mins. Add 3/4 of kale, cover and cook for 5 mins. Add Worcestershire sauce.
Preheat broiler. Toss remaining kale with olive oil, salt and pepper, and place on baking sheet. Broil about 3 mins. Thin sour cream with water.
Purée soup with immersion blender, or working in small batches in a blender. Ladle into bowls and serve with bacon, almonds, sour cream and kale chips!

Pesto Bean Soup with Olives

April 2, 2021September 28, 20221 Comment

Hello, hello!

Two weeks in a row of posting! But don’t get your hopes up 🙂 I’m going to try to post more regularly and make it part of my weekly schedule, but sometimes I forget to take pictures, so then I don’t really have a lot to post. We’ll see though, because I really enjoy posting these!

This week has been pretty light in terms of school work. I had a finance quiz due yesterday morning, but other than that I haven’t had anything due, just a lot of reading. This week I’ve been focusing really heavily on my campaigning for Student Government. We need 3/5 of the student population to vote, and today is the last day (if we meet 3/5 student body). Hoping I’ll win! There’s so much that I want to do in Student Government, and even if I can’t finish it all, I want to at least get it started so that next year’s representative can pick up where I left off.

But anyway, other than that, there really hasn’t been much else going on. I’ve been really productive these last two weeks. Even though there’s still work for me to catch up on, I almost feel like I’m ahead. It’s a nice feeling because I don’t feel so overwhelmed by all the work I have to get done (ideally this weekend, but let’s be honest).

A few weeks ago I made this Pesto Bean Soup with Olives that I found in Food Network Magazine: Super Easy Soups & Stews (this was a great Christmas gift!). I personally love soups. I think they’re always very easy to make, and they typically turn out great (I had one recipe that didn’t really go as planned…). Plus, there are so many options with soup! And it’s a great comfort food. I must say, I’ve tried very hard to plan out my recipes so that I’m not cooking soup every single week, and it’s hard! They just always look so good!! Also, this recipe only has two steps, so how could I not?

I love how this soup turned out. It was delicious 🙂 I actually ended up running out early because I kept adding a little extra to my bowl every night since it was soooo good. To be honest, I wasn’t going to make this soup at first. When I was originally going through the magazines to pick recipes, this wasn’t one that caught my eye. I think I tend to pick recipes that are photographed brightly/in a lot of light. Almost as if it makes them look more appealing? Or maybe it just makes me picture eating the meal on a nice, sunny day so it’s instantly appealing. The photo for this recipe was really nice though; it may have been because it was a green soup(?).

Overall, 10/10 would HIGHLY recommend. I’ve made pesto pasta in the past because I was craving pesto (and pasta), but I think this satisfied the pesto craving better. There are so many flavors in one spoonful, it was almost exciting eating it. That sounds so corny. But basically, it was really good.

Like I said earlier, I really enjoy writing this blog. It’s fun for me and even though I’m not the greatest photographer or cook, I get to share the things I enjoy with other people. Since I started, I feel like my cooking has come a long way, but I’m excited to see how much more I can improve. Overall, my execution of recipes is much better, but I also feel like my general knowledge is better. For example, when I cook something without a recipe, I feel that I have a better idea in terms of what foods go well together. It’s been really enjoyable.

I have some thoughts about what I want to try out in the future with this blog. I think it would be fun to do more cultural food. I have a few friends who are international students, but also many of my domestic friends are very closely tied with their cultural backgrounds. I think it would be fun to do some posts in the future with them to share some typical foods from their respective cultures. Food for thought…no pun intended 😀

To be continued…

Gabriela

Lentil & Vegetable Soup

February 10, 2020September 28, 2022Leave a comment

Happy Monday, Week 6!

I’m already halfway through my quarter. My roommates and I all feel the same way – we’re ready to graduate. Last week went by so quickly, and when Friday come up, I didn’t really believe it was already Friday. I ended up not posting because my schedule was so out of whack.

But now I’m ready!

I should be out of my boot within the next two weeks, and hopefully back to lacrosse in three weeks. These next two weeks are going to be pretty chaotic. This week I’ve got test corrections due for my inorganic exam, and I’ve got a 15 page sulfur lab report due. Then I’m in LA for the whole weekend, including President’s Day. Then the following Friday, I have a bioinformatics research draft due, and a graduation requirement essay due. I have yet to go grocery shopping for this week, and to be honest I don’t know what to make yet. But, one thing at a time.

So anyway, back to food. This past week I made a lentil soup for dinners. I’ve actually never had lentil soup, or cooked lentils, so there was a bit of a learning and tasting curve. This recipe turned out really good and ended up being really easy to make. It was great to have because it’s been relatively cold outside, so it’s been great to come home and have a warm soup for dinner.

The recipe I followed was from Cooking Classy. I measured most things out this time, so I followed the recipe pretty closely. I only used one box of vegetable broth, since two boxes wouldn’t have fit in my pot. The only other tweak I made was with the tomatoes. I saw them on the list, and knew I needed to buy crushed tomatoes when I went to the grocery store, and yet, I did not come home with crushed tomatoes. Thankfully I had some leftover cherry tomatoes in the fridge, so I instead cut those up and tossed them into the soup.

Tweaks and all, it turned out really good. Although, next time I will remember to buy crushed tomatoes (inserts face palm emoji). This was great because I felt like I wasn’t going to make enough, but it ended up lasting me the whole week, which typically doesn’t happen. I’ve recently been trying to minimize my meat intake. To be entirely honest, it’s kinda expensive and I never feel like it lasts me long enough. However I’m still going to the gym so I need to keep up my protein intake. The lentils were a great substitution for that.

So now that it’s Monday, my whole week is off by a day. I normally do my cooking for the week on Sunday. I have yet to go grocery shopping or even decide what to make, so we’re off to a great start. Hopefully I’ll figure it out by tonight before the week slips away from me again!

To be continued…

Gabriela

White Bean and Tomato Soup

January 25, 2020September 28, 2022Leave a comment

Hello and happy weekend!

I broke my toe this week and it’s thrown my schedule all out of whack! But I am finally getting back to it. I’ve taken care of that, taken the GRE, and now I’m ready to enjoy my weekend. I have a GameCube and recently bought MarioKart and Animal Crossing, and I’m hoping to buy Zelda or Mario Party Sunshine at some point. But the thing has been a mess because my controller won’t stop vibrating when I shake a tree in animal crossing, and the disc was “unreadable” right as I was about to win in Final Fantasy! So frustrating. So I’ll have a look at it today so that it’s up and running for my weekend relaxation.

This week’s soup is SO GOOD. I know Chicken Noodle Soup is the “go to” for when you’re sick, but this is better. The crushed red pepper flakes (which I love) really do wonders on your sinuses. Literally all you need is a spoonful. Also, its soup! Soup and pasta are by far the coziest foods to eat, you can’t really go wrong.

I got the recipe for this soup from Making Thyme for Health. The blog focuses on plant-based recipes, so if you’re vegetarian, definitely check out some of the other recipes! This recipe was also really simple to make. It’s not a recipe where you can just throw everything into the pot and wait, but the directions are very straight-forward and clear so it’s easy to follow along.

I don’t have a very large soup pot, so I had to modify the recipe so that it would all fit in the pot I was using. I only changed amounts, not ingredients, and I added a lot (not really) of red pepper flakes. I’ve never eaten white beans (I think?) so it was cool to try something new within the recipe. I’ve also never cooked using a can of crushed tomatoes. While they’re not overwhelmingly new experiences, it was still cool to use new things in my cooking!

It was also great because there was kale in it! Side note, I think kale is gross. Plain, I can’t stand the taste of it. I applaud people who do. It’s really healthy, but so nasty. But recently I’ve been adding it into my smoothies, and my cooking so I haven’t been tasting it as strongly. It’s great because now I get the benefits of kale without the strong taste.

Overall this turned out so delicious and I would and will 100% make this again. It was nice and filling, and the perfect thing to come home to after a “long” day of “working hard.”

To be continued…

Gabriela