Cream of Mushroom Soup

I love green bean casserole, but I abandoned mainstream canned soups a year ago because of the non-food additions found in most of them (like high-fructose corn syrup). So I’ve had to learn how to make my own creamy soups for such delicious comfort foods as the green bean casserole. Here’s my cream of mushroom soup – it’s easy, it’s delicious and well worth making.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Ingredients:

* 4 Tablespoons butter, divided use
* 1 pound mushrooms
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 medium sweet onion, chopped
* 1/4 cup flour
* 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, or to taste
* 3 cups veggie broth
* 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
* 1 cup heavy cream
* Chopped parsley for garnish

Preparation:
Clean mushrooms with a mushroom brush or damp paper towel. Cut half of the mushrooms into slices. Chop the remainder.

Melt half of the butter in a large saucepan and saute sliced mushrooms until golden. Remove and reserve sliced mushrooms. Add remaining butter to the same pan, along with the chopped mushrooms and sweet onions. Sprinkle with salt. Cook, stirring often, until onion is soft.

Return sliced mushrooms to the pan. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly about 2 minutes, until smooth. Slowly add broth while stirring. Simmer, stirring often, until thickened. Add nutmeg and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning, if need be.

Add heavy cream and bring to a simmer. (Do not boil.) Ladle into soup bowls and garnish with chopped parsley.

Yield: 2 entree servings or 4 smaller appetizer servings

Gluten-Free Pie Crust

I’m traveling right now to visit friends and family in Oregon. Arthur’s mother Loree has recently discovered a gluten intolerance, so one of our Christmas gifts to her was a gluten-free berry pie. Following is the pie crust recipe I modified and used. It was slightly grainy, but otherwise the texture was pleasant – not too dry and nicely flavorful. I’ll definitely use it again.
Gluten-Free Pie Crust

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons rice flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup potato starch
3 teaspoons sugar (I use honey or maple syrup here)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon strong cinnamon
8 tablespooons (or, one stick) cold butter
1 large egg
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/4 ice-cold water, or enough to make the dough stick together

Mix together all the dry ingredients, including the sugar and cinnamon. Cut the butter into little pieces, about 1/2-inch thick and drop the pieces into the dry ingredients. Using a pastry cutter or fork, meld the butter into the dry ingredients until the butter has crumbled into pea-sized pieces.

Make a well in the dry ingredients. Drop the egg and apple cider vinegar in, then stir them in, gently, with a fork, stirring from the center out. Once they are incorporated into the dry ingredients, slowly drizzle the ice-cold water into the mixture, a little at a time, then stirring to see if it has become dough yet. You do not want this dough to be too wet. Add water only it all coheres together.

At this point, drop the ball of dough onto a large piece of parchment paper. Place another piece of parchment paper, the same size, on top of the dough. Gently, smoosh the dough outward, equally in all directions, until it is a thick, round cake of dough, about the size of a pie plate. (despite using parchment paper, the dough still sticks *very* easily. Spray with cooking spray in advance or sprinkle with gluten-free flour)

Refrigerate the ball of dough, for as long as you can stand. Ideally, you would prepare the dough in the evening and refrigerate overnight. Take the dough out of the refrigerator at least twenty minutes before you want to work with it.

Leave the dough in the parchment-paper sandwich and roll it out. By rolling it, gently, between the pieces of parchment paper, you will not need to add more flour to the mix. Roll it out as thin as you can, then strip the top piece of parchment paper off the dough. Gently, lay your favorite pie plate on top of the dough, then flip the whole thing over. The dough should sag into the pie plate. You can crimp the edges at this point. If some of the dough falls off the sides, don’t worry. Simply re-attach the pieces to the crust-to-be by pressing in with your fingers.

This dough recipe makes enough for two single-crust pies or one double-crust pie.

Potato Leek Soup

Potato Leek Soup

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 40 minutes

8 potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
4 cups vegetable broth
cooking oil (2-3 T)
2-3 leeks, sliced
1 cup heavy cream
herbs to taste (such as thyme, rosemary and basil)

In a large saucepan or stockpot, bring potatoes and broth to a boil. Cook until potatoes are tender. Meanwhile, heat cooking oil in another pan and cook leek slices until tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Try not to overcook them; you don’t want them to be soggy in the soup.

When the potatoes are tender, stir in the leeks, heavy cream and herbs. I tried even amounts of dried thyme, rosemary and basil, which was quite tasty. Stir to blend and remove from the heat; serve hot.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Homemade Applesauce

Although it’s been a while since I posted, we’ve still been cooking away. Our final delivery of summer CSA shares was last Monday, and we received 15 pounds of delicious honey crisp and pink lady apples.

Considering we’ve gotten 5-8 pounds of apples every week for two months, it was time to do something other than making pie and eating them fresh. So today my mother and I made 7 quarts of delicious applesauce.

I found several recipes online, but this is the one we used:

Homemade Applesauce

• 13-15 pounds yummy apples, cored and sliced
• few tablespoons cinnamon & nutmeg (to taste)
• Canning equipment – jars, lids, bands, etc

Wash, core and slice apples. We left the skin on the apples, but next time we’ll cut the apple slices again to make the skin pieces smaller. Place sliced apples in large bowl of cold water with a little bit of lemon juice while slicing everything to prevent the fruit from browning.

Put a small amount of water (1 cup) in the bottom of a large pot and add apple slices. Cover pot and simmer on medium-to-high heat, stirring occasionally to prevent burning the apples.

Cook the apples for 20-30 minutes, or until the fruit is soft. Use a potato masher and mash up all the slices – making them as chunky or smooth as you like. Continue stirring and simmering until there are no standing pools of water. This is a good time to add spices like cinnamon and nutmeg to taste. This would also be the time to add sugar, but because our apples were sweet to begin with, we didn’t add any sugar. (woo!)

Some recipes I found call for putting the cooked apples through a food mill or other sieve to make the sauce smoother. We don’t have a food mill, and like our sauce chunky – so we opted for the chunkier appleasauce.

Remove sauce from heat and can using already sanitized jars and lids. Process about 20 minutes. (canning instructions & resources here) Our 15 pounds of apples made about 7 quarts of sauce.

Home Canning Resources

Although I’ve posted a few random instructions and resources for home canning, I wanted to share some of the good sites and info I’ve found for home canning.

I’ve never done pressure-cooking canning to date, but at some point I will likely venture into the pressure canner world to preserve soups and low-acid vegetables like pumpkins.

Here are links to sites I’ve used:

• General instructions for water bath canning
• Simple instructions and recipes with lots of photos. This site has *annoying* graphics, but I’ve found lots of good info and great step by step photos. If you can overlook the comicsans type, you’ll find great resources.
• A list of general canning tips – canning gets easier with practice, and as you learn the principles of canning. We’ve reduced our processing time significantly as we’ve learned how much water to prepare, or how to keep the jars hot, or how to maximize space.
• The National Center for Home Food Preservation’s web site is sort of well organized and has additional info about freezing and drying food at home. The language & organization is very academic, but the information is high quality, especially the articles on seasonal food & safety tips. Check out this article on preserving apples.
• And finally, the Ball Canning web site has step-by-step instructions and videos for canning and adjusting timing for altitude.

This season, we’ve canned 30 quarts of sweet & dill pickles, 10 quarts of tomatoes, 20 quarts tomato sauce, 10 quarts of peaches, 7 quarts of applesauce, and an untold number of jams with cherries, plums, apples, pears and peaches. Our shelves are full of fruits of vegetables that grew in nearby soil, was handpicked by people I know, and will now provide tasty deliciousness for several months. We’re already looking forward to next season, more pickles, and the awesome opportunity to create, preserve and share food that is healthy and good for our soil and ourselves. Yum.

Autumn Soup!

My apologies for not posting in here more. It only reflects what’s really been happening in my life – I’ve not been around the house much lately except to sleep, and that doesn’t leave me much time for cooking. The housemates have been handling most of the CSA veggies.

But it’s Autumn, and the early snows have us turning a corner in the CSA. Our shares will continue through the first week of December, but the summer veggies (like tomatoes and eggplant) are gone, and now we are facing our first in many weeks of squash and other hardy fall crops.

I love winter squash. These veggies are so versatile to baking, steaming, and souping and that’s just the type of food I crave as the seasons change and days are colder. A tip: any kind of winter squash can be opened up, cleaned out (seeds & strings) and baked until tender. You can then remove the peels and add the squash meat to any kind of dish you could imagine, or just add butter and eat whole.

To keep squash for later, just puree the cooked meat and freeze in bags – great for pumpkin pie, squash soup, etc.

Here’s a soup that seems more complicated than it really is, and helps you dispatch large numbers of squash easily.

Autumn Soup

• 1 medium sized pumpkins or two small winter squashes of almost any variety (buttercup, butternut, acorn)
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 3-4 apples
• 2 cups vegetable broth (or chicken, if you prefer)
• spices such as sage, nutmeg, ginger, clove, cinnamon, allspice (go lightly with the cinnamon, or you’ll turn it into a pumpkin pie)
• 1 cup crushed walnuts
• salt & pepper to taste
• heavy cream

to prepare squashes, cut in half and scoop out seeds and stringy stuff. place skin side down in a baking pan with a little bit of water and bake at 350F for 45 minutes – or until flesh is very soft. Let the squash/pumpkin cool – you can even refrigerate overnight if you aren’t ready to cook the soup. Remove peel from squash and cut into large cubes.

sautee onions over medium heat in oil until transparent. Add apples and cook until they begin to soften (but not burn) Add vegetable broth, walnuts, squash and spices, and simmer over medium heat until apples are cooked.

use food processor or vita-mix to puree the soup, adding the heavy cream at the very end. If you want to freeze the soup for later, don’t add the cream – you’ll just add it later when you’re reheating the soup.

you can also add vegetables like carrots, potatoes or other roots to the soup, but it has a very nice warming flavor as prepared above.

Denver City Council Supports Local Food

A few weeks ago, the Denver City Council adopted a resolution supporting local food. Although on one hand this doesn’t directly translate to new zoning laws or change the way people eat, it is a step in the right direction. The more we talk about food and how it’s grown, the more we can work together toward food systems that nourish ourselves and our planet.

Here’s a video of the City Council meeting where the proclamation was read and discussed by several members of the Council. I don’t know about you, but when an elected official says, ‘growing and sharing food with neighbors is a sacred act,’ I get very excited. Perhaps we can have healthier food systems.

In any case, here’s the link: http://bit.ly/17HxRy The grow local proclamation starts at 23:52, and there’s even a part where I talk about local food and the economy at 40:30. (and if someone is able to capture and edit this video to just the food piece, I would be extremely grateful)

Carrot Ginger Soup

Ahh, autumn. There’s nothing like cooler weather and an abundance of veggies to kick my soup making into high gear. Here’s the recipe for a carrot ginger soup I made this week that was quite delicious and warming.

Creamy Carrot Ginger Soup

6 tbsp. (3/4 stick) unsalted butter

1 lg. yellow onion, chopped

1/4 c. finely chopped ginger root

3 cloves garlic, minced

7 c. chicken stock

1 c. dry white wine

1 1/2 lb. carrots, peeled, cut into 1/2″ pieces

2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Pinch curry powder

Salt & ground pepper

Snipped fresh chives or parsley

1. Melt butter in large stock pot over medium heat. Add onion, ginger and garlic; saute for 15-20 minuts.

2. Add the stock, wine and carrots. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered over medium heat until the carrots are very tender, about 45 minutes.

3. Puree the soup in a blender or processor (fitted with steel blade). Season with lemon juice, curry powder, salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with chives or parsley. Serve hot or cold.

• 6 tbsp. (3/4 stick) butter
• 1 lg. yellow onion, chopped
• 1/4 c. finely chopped ginger root
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 6 c. vegetable broth
• 1 c. dry white wine
• 1 1/2 lb. carrots, cut into 1/2″ pieces
• Dash of curry powder
• Salt & ground pepper
• 1 cup half and half (optional)

1. Melt butter in large stock pot over medium heat. Add onion, ginger and garlic; saute for 15-20 minutes, or until onion is soft.

2. Add the stock, wine, curry and carrots. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered over medium heat until the carrots are very tender, about 45 minutes.

3. Puree the soup in a blender or processor (fitted with steel blade). Add half and half (you can use whipping cream, but the half and half is lower in fat) Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 4-5

Saving Seeds (aka, Yes, your choices do matter)

Recently my housemate Jim took me to a garden that his friend cares for to harvest some of the abundance of veggies found there. The homeowners are wealthy retirees with a beautiful landscaped property, including a garden large enough to feed a small army. The two of them could never possibly consume all of the yummy vegetables they grow, so I was thrilled to spend time there.

My half an hour visit yielded 25 pounds of heirloom tomatoes, 5 pounds of huge carrots, chard, herbs and a few other random vegetables. But the tomatoes…ahhh. They had around 30 healthy plants of at least ten varieties. Because my own garden is pathetic, I was sooo happy to hang out in the 6 ft tall tomato vines, finding the ripest and most beautiful fruits.

I could go on and on about these tomatoes. But I’ll focus on just a few things I wanted to share.

The first dish we made with our newfound heirloom tomato wealth was a strange casserole with sauteed zucchini, mashed potatoes and sliced tomatoes on top. When I sliced into a 2-pound yellow brandywine, the center was still warm from the sun.

For me, the essence of food happiness is found in a fresh, still-warm tomato in all it’s delicious glory.

Because I love tomatoes so much, I did a little research into saving tomato seeds so I can grow them in my own garden next year. As I sliced carefully into each tomato, scooping out the seeds and goop into a jar, I thought about the cyclical nature of food. How each plant contains within itself the potential for hundreds, even thousands, of new plants. And how the only reason any of us are able to *live* is because of the variety and tenacity of plant life and all the supporting species that build our food system.

Real food does not come from a grocery store. It comes from the ground, nourished by soil and water and earthworms and bees and sunshine. This local food “movement” is quite simple at its core. We are rediscovering this most basic connection – of where our food comes from and why it’s so important.

I believe it is a basic human right to have access to healthy, safe, fresh food that nourishes us and others (like the bees). And I imagine how our food and how we eat it would change if we prepared each meal not only cognizant of where our food came from, but also, where our next meal came from. Saving seeds out of the tomato (or eggplant or pumpkin) means there will be more tomatoes, more meals. I now have the ability to nurture more life simply by being aware of how those plants grow and my part in it.

Even if you aren’t interested in (or unable to) grow a garden for yourself, you still have an enormous amount of power in determining the future of our food. If we want food that is delicious, healthy, safe, and available to all, then we must be aware of how our choices are impacting our food system. And because I’m now on a roll about the importance of food, I’ll make a few more declarations. Consider it a summary of how you can have better food.

Choose organic fresh food grown close to home. Learn where your farmers are, and get to know them. Seek out meat that is humanely raised, eggs that come from happy chickens, and food products from local sources. Give yourself more time to prepare food and share it with people you love. Stop throwing out food. Start composting, saving seeds, and growing them. If you can’t use it, give it away. Stop killing bees and grow more flowers. Invest in local food systems and ask restaurants where they buy their food. Take the extra time to read labels. Notice how your food tastes, what makes it better, and how it makes you feel. Stop pretending as if your choices don’t matter, as if you can’t change anything, as if what we put into our bodies doesn’t impact everything else. And when you are able, spend some time with plants and bugs and soil, and delicious tomatoes still warm from the sun.

Awesome Tomato Soup

This recipe for tomato soup was in today’s newsletter from my CSA. And since I picked 20 pounds of amazing tomatoes from a friend’s friend’s garden yesterday, we decided to try it out.

Tomato Soup

1 tbs butter

2 cloves garlic (minced)

2 carrots (chopped)

2 stalks celery (chopped)

2 quarts canned tomatoes (or equivalent in fresh tomatoes and water)

pinch of sugar

1/2 cup fresh basil

salt and pepper to taste

grated Parmesan cheese

Heat butter in skillet; saute garlic, carrots and celery.  Add tomatoes and simmer 20 minutes.  Add sugar, basil, salt, and pepper; simmer 5-10 minutes longer.  Top with Parmesan.  Makes 8 servings.

Tomato Soup

• 1 tbs butter
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• 2 carrots (chopped)
• 2 stalks celery (chopped)
• 2 quarts canned tomatoes (or equivalent in fresh tomatoes and water)
• pinch of sugar
• 1/2 cup fresh basil
• salt and pepper to taste
• grated Parmesan cheese

Heat butter in skillet; saute garlic, carrots and celery.  Add tomatoes and simmer 20 minutes.  Add sugar, basil, salt, and pepper; simmer 5-10 minutes longer.  Top with Parmesan.  Makes 8 servings.

Notes: I forgot to use butter and used olive oil instead (silly habits). Also, I simmered the soup much longer than it has listed here – probably 45 mins for the first phase and 15 for the second. I then removed from heat for a few minutes and pureed the soup in the vitamixer until smooth.

And finally, for your viewing pleasure: