January Garden Soup

Sunday, January 13, 2008

While last week’s frugal winter soup focused on ingredients frozen from our summer garden, this weekend’s soup used some fresh stuff I picked yesterday thanks to the disturbingly warm winter temperatures we’ve been having.  I meandered out to the garden to dump some compost scraps and was a bit surprised to see that the kale plants had a lot of young leaves on them.  I guess a week of temperatures in the 60s got the plants going again.  I grabbed some scissors and snipped a bunch of the leaves to add to my baked potato soup along with fresh parsley, rosemary and thyme from my kitchen garden. 

Since my soups are usually improvised, I didn’t write down the exact measurements.  I started with some melted butter and sautéed celery, onions and garlic.  I then added about ¼ c. of spelt flour from Small Valley Milling (see story about the farm here from Farming Magazine [available at the Fair Food Farmstand], about 4 cups of veggie broth and some milk.  Then, I added some baked potatoes that I had mashed and some that I diced along with the fresh herbs.  In the last ten minutes, I added the chopped baby kale. 

Because my husband is a big guy that isn’t necessarily satisfied with just a bowl of soup, I try to bake up something to go alongside.  This time, I found a recipe for wheat germ muffins in one of my favorite cookbooks for practical, frugal cooking using whole foods:  American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldbeck.  I understand that there is a second edition of this cookbook, but my copy is one that my husband found for me at a used bookstore a few years ago.  I’ve gotten many basic vegetarian recipes from it.  I substituted the spelt flour for half of the whole wheat flour called for in the recipe with good results.  I’m going to keep experimenting with this flour, but so far it’s been great.

All in all, it was a simple supper.  I’m glad I happened to spy the kale because I’m sure the forecasted snow will kill the plants. Then again, who would have thought that they’d be alive and producing in January?