Tasting Spoons

I’m re-posting this because one of the links STILL isn’t working. For those of you who subscribe, my apologies for getting this now for the third time!

Waiting for the weather to turn Fall-ish seems to take forever here in Southern California. On our recent driving trip we even got up to snow level (in Mt. Lassen), and endured 4 days of rain in Oregon, but as soon as we headed south again it was back into Indian Summer. The air conditioning has been running some hours nearly every day. But, it does cool off at night, thankfully. It’s not warm enough to eat outside in the evening (besides, by the time we eat it’s pitch dark now), and because I’ve been very busy trying to catch up on “things,” I’ve done some quick and easy dinners of late. Whenever the weather turns cool, my mind turns to soup. Soup is probably my most favorite food to cook, believe it or not. I even considered naming my blog something related to soup. But then, I cook a little bit of everything, so that would have been quite misleading and far fewer people would read my blog.

As I was baking Dana’s recent birthday cakes, my granddaughter Taylor asked me what was my favorite thing to cook. When I told her it was soup she gave me a funny look. When she comes to visit us I usually bake with her (cookies, cakes, desserts - I mean, what kid doesn’t love desserts . . . I always hope that one of my grandaughters or grandsons will have an interest in cooking).  So she was a bit mystified, I guess, that I said soup! Her mother (my daughter) doesn’t eat soup. Period. I don’t know where I went wrong there – she doesn’t eat eggs (or breakfast, for that matter), mushrooms or soup. Nor does she drink coffee or tea. Or wine. Or beer for that matter. Oh well. We eat/drink almost all of them. Back to soups . . . I’ve even written up a post about my soup “library” in my freezer – the vertical stack of flattened freezer bags full of soup. Twice this week I’ve pulled out bags from my inventory. I’m getting ready to start firing up the burners for a new season of soups.

I read somebody else’s blog this morning which gave me the idea that maybe some of you haven’t been reading my blog all that long. And maybe you haven’t read some of my older posts about my favorite soups. If you haven’t looked at my RECIPES page, you can always go there and view a list of all (or most all) of the recipes of all types that I’ve posted since I started my blog. Each recipe contains a link for the story I wrote (the blog post) and a link to the pdf file I have created for every one of my blog recipes. I fall behind now and then in updating it with my most recent posts. But most recipes are there.

This soup list below isn’t all-inclusive . . . I’m only telling you about my favorite hot soups. The ones I make year after year after year. The ones I crave. Here you go:

Cabbage Patch Stew -  Kind of a cross between soup and stew. Simple to make and served with a topping of freshly made mashed potatoes. This is one of my all-time favorites because of the combination of hearty soup and the potatoes. Freeze the potatoes separately.

Cream of Tomato Soup -  From a cooking class I took last year up in Sonoma. Oh so much better than Campbell’s. This is the first soup I’ll be making very soon. I crave this soup, especially with a half of a toasted sharp cheddar cheese sandwich made on grainy wheat bread.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup - a rather complicated fresh butternut squash soup. It also contains onions and apples, all oven roasted before concocting the soup itself. Succulent and a bit sweet. Freezes really well.

Roasted Poblano Asiago Soup -  the recipe I researched after going to Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen and having a similar soup. I crave this soup too.

Butternut Squash with Ginger & Jalapeno - a completely different soup than the above one - spicy, smooth and quite simple to make.

Tuscan Chicken Soup -  not a chicken soup at all. Very easy soup with ground beef and greens.

Sopa de Calabacitas - a favorite because I just l-o-v-e calabacitas (a Southwestern combo of corn, poblano chiles, onion, zucchini and cilantro). Usually served as a side vegetable, I like the mixture so much I made it into a soup.  

    

And just because I’m writing up a post about soups, here are two cold soups that are particular favorites too, which I probably won’t be making again until next spring sometime:

Cream of Cucumber Soup -  A cold summer soup from my friend Jackie. I must have made it 5 times over this last summer.

Strawberry Gazpacho -  from a cooking class a couple of years ago. Simply scrumptious. When strawberries come in season in the spring I’ll be making this right away quick.

I created the photo collage from photos in my archive. Once I finished it I realized the top left isn’t soup, it’s salsa. From the tiny thumbnail, it looked like tortilla soup. But the rest are soup photos from my recent cooking.