I’m a big soup lover, so lately that is what I’ve been experimenting with. Sometimes I will look up recipes online and then alter them according to my own taste or with the items I have on hand.
2 recent successes were roasted butternut squash soup with white beans and a jar of Trader Joe’s Curry Simmer sauce. I roasted the peeled and diced squash in the oven with a little bit of olive oil, sea salt and fresh ground pepper. When the squash was fork tender, I put it into the blender with a little bit of the broth and blended it until smooth in batches. Then I put the squash, vegetable broth and beans (which I blended slightly, so they were still chunky) with a jar of the curry sauce and just heated it through. I got raves for this one.
The other was a “creamy” mushroom soup with kale. Instead of using cream, I pureed white beans and added that to the vegetable broth. Then I sauteed the finely chopped schrooms with onion, carrots and celery and then threw in a cup of fresh chopped kale and let that whole thing simmer on low for ½ an hour. Deeeeelish!
Another thing I threw together was some feta cheese and some orange marmalade and a few chopped hazelnuts into a warm tortilla that I rolled up. One of the best breakfasts ever.
And when hungry for pizza and salad, I took some foccacia buns (from Trader Joe’s) sliced them open, put pizza sauce on the bottom half, added shredded mozzarella cheese, sliced mushrooms and a handful of fresh arugula (Trader Joe’s bagged arugula). I put the top half of the bun back on top and then I baked them in the oven until the cheese was gooey. You can do this with any kind of cheese and use spinach if the arugula is too strong for your taste. And next time I might throw on a pinch of Trader Joe’s french fried onions as well.