Delicious, Warming Soup

Yellow lentil soup with star anise and Thai galangal (purchased in Thailand last year) with delicate chunks of cooked squash

We have really enjoyed soup a lot this past several weeks.  I've made chili/beef back soup, turkey rice soup, chicken/carrot/pasta soup, and broccoli cheese with potato.  The discovery of homemade tomato soup has made any possiblity of future Campbell's canned tomato soup pretty uninteresting. 

I consider onions a necessity in making just about any soup.  I start with olive oil and chopped onion.  Garlic would be a nice addition, but Kevin can always smell it when I add garlic, and he really dislikes that good stuff.  So, being the "good wife," I avoid garlic...well, most of the time!

So, as the olive oil and onions are simmering away, I chop up any meat which will be added.  That goes in next.  Beef and chicken are my only real choices here.  I could branch out and get camel, horse, goat, or lamb, but why ruin a good stew with those?  They just aren't our favorites.  When making any soup with chicken, I consider at least one leg and thigh a necessity.  The marrow in the bones makes a better broth.

Next goes in any vegetables.  The standards seem to be carrots, potatoes, or broccoli.  I like celery, but it's pretty rare to find around here.  Later, at the very end of cooking, spinach is a nice addition (3-5 minutes of cooking time).   After the vegetables cook a short time with the olive oil, I like to add several cups of water and a bouillion cube.  Is this cheating?  I don't know, but it sure makes a good soup base!

Tomatoes are nice in some soups.  And, like I said, I really enjoy the tomato soup I've discovered in the Wycliff Cookbook.  Saute some onion (of course!), then, make a roux, then add basil, tomato juice with no sugar, 3-4 fresh tomatoes (I just wash them and gently dig out the center core and plop the whole tomato into the mix.  Let this simmer for awhile, stirring often, and then pull the tomatoes back out, peel them, and dice them up, returning them to the pot.)  At the very end, add salt, a couple small spoonfuls of sugar (if desired), and a cup or two of milk.  Just warm gently and eat!

As you can tell, I've fallen in love with soup.  I make large batches so we can eat it for at least three meals, since we eat almost all lunches and suppers at home.  I'm making myself hungry just thinking about this!  

Soup...it's a pot full of comfort. It's what warms us from the inside out.  And we've been needing that lately with daily temperatures in the negative range.