our little soup factory

In preparation for baby (who should be gracing us anytime now) we spent the day making these various soups, putting them all in freezer bags, and all ready and waiting to be plopped into our crock pot for those days when we will likely be up to our ears in diapers and out of food.

In our stash and now helping to fill our freezer are these various soups:

-Tuscan White Bean & Escarole Soup
-Two-Mushroom Barley Soup
-Moroccan Lentil and Chickpea Soup
-Pesto Potato Soup
-Winter Squash and Sweet Potato Soup
-Black Bean Soup

All of these soup recipes came from the wonderful Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker (200 Recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals that are Ready When You Are) by Robin Robertson. I borrowed this book from a friend and have thoroughly enjoyed picking through it. So far, so great! There are many more things than just soups included in this little gem, such as breakfasts, grains, pastas, desserts and bread. Good thing winter brings out the slow cooker in me. :)

Taco Soup

We're entering into soup-phase, that time of year when our cooking revolves around the many combinations of WARM we can come up with. And as in many years past, that includes one of our family favorites, Taco Soup.

Here's the recipe for this quick and yummy soup that has everybody smiling.

Taco Soup
Ingredients:
1 lb. tofu, cubed
1/2 onion chopped
taco seasoning mix
1 1/2 quarts of tomato juice (more, if you like our soup more soupy and less chunky)
1 cup salsa
tortilla chips
your favorite taco toppings (cheese, olives, avocado, etc)

Directions:
Sauté onion and tofu in a bit of olive oil until lightly browned.
Add taco seasoning mix (only half a packet if you want to cut the spice) and stir for one minute.
Add tomato juice and salsa and simmer until warmed through.
Ladel soup into bowls. Add tortilla chips around the edges of soup and top with your favorite taco toppings.

Jack-O-Lantern Stew

We always host a potluck meal on Halloween night with friends, and I usually make stew in a pumpkin. This year, running short on time for my usually 7 hour recipe, we used one of these wonderful, tasty Cinderella pumpkins and did a simple pumpkin and black-eyed pea combination that I will have to work hard to recreate as it wasn't a recipe. Served with black wild rice, it was a definite hit!

Tomorrow, I head to the fourth and final potluck of the weekend, so I will try to recreate it for that and this time write down the measurements and ingredients. Until then, hope you had a fun-filled Halloween night!