Garlic Breath Soup

Poor little baby Zizi cat hated this soup night. But our new buddy Tater-tot loved it! Especially because he got to lick the bowl. The bowl of rich garlic goodness. This soup is a nod to our vampire friends Edward and what's-her-face from Twilight. Or New Moon. Whatever. You know. I should probably know. I can probably take a swing through What Would Justin Bobby Do and figure it out.

Nods Bella and Beau.

Okay soupies, time to start seriously thinking about the great soup pot day coming up, that's right, A Year of Monday's Soup Anniversary Gala. The date should be sometime in January, details will follow, but these are a couple things that should be on your radar in the meantime:

• Review this blog: Take a stroll back to your favorite soggy recipe; was it Veggie Detox (it actually was, I have analytics and that is our most popular soup-- you alcholoholics, you), or African peanut soup (that was MY favorite soup), or Lime Soup (Alayna?). Either way, check out our past hits and remember all the good times we had together. Remember when the blender broke? Classic soup memory.

• Make your request early! If you have a soup you really want to make (you will bring this soup to our party in a soup pot... that's another thing, you might have to buy a soup pot)... email one of us and we'll cross that one off the list. All the soups must be different!
  

• Start singing and tapping your toes: We are currently looking for songwriters, poets and dancers to help us write and choreograph the group "We Aren't Afraid of Soup" song that we will videotape and then repost on our blog and it will quickly go viral.

So let us know who could help us out. I'm not joking about any of this. At first Alayna thought I was and then she saw the soup ladle sparkling in my eye and knew. Knew I was serious. Souperious. And when you're souperious nothing can stop you.

Bad Breath Soup

• Roughly chop 3-4 onions and two heads (that's right, HEADS, not cloves) of garlic and saute in a sprinkling of olive oil and about 3 tablespoons of butter on low
• Add chopped fresh parsley, rosemary and thyme (we cheated and used dry thyme) and cover, stirring occasionally, letting it cook for about 30 minutes
  
  
• Add chicken stock or vegetable broth and bring to a boil
  
• Cube half a loaf of french or otherwise delicious bread and add it to the pot until soft (add more broth if it's too chunky)\

• Blend and serve over the leftover pieces of bread
• Try to avoid sitting to close to strangers

French Lentil & Baba Ganooooooooush

As the lentils simmered Alayna used plumber's clay to fix her vase and I highlighted special lines in Jack London's biography I had earmarked not having a pen at the time. The soup smelled wonderful. Zizi couldn't stop waiting for shadows to move on the wall.

It smells like autumn now. This is good. I'm wearing two sweaters right now. Which is excessive but the room is chilly.

While the soup simmered Alayna and I went through her craft box. Thick oils and sandpaper, somewhere. I paged through her sketchbook from France. A drawing I did from a rooftop in Fez drinking mint tea. A picture of the corner of my apartment over the art gallery. And a lot of hollowy trees. A letter never sent to a boy. Van Gogh's bedroom. I miss textures.

We started eating the baba ganoush before the soup was ready and it was wonderful. We drank ginger tea from the elephant mugs before that. I walked home 30 blocks and the sky was purple and blotted with clouds and it felt spooky like Halloween. I howled when I tripped over a rat running across the street.

This soup tastes like France and a little bit of fall. It's good.

Lentil Soup
(adapted from Mojdeh's mother, who took it from Martha, as in Stewart, that originally had elusive french lentils and escarole, neither of which we could find)

• finely chop about four cloves of garlic and saute in olive oil
  
• add a medium sized white onion, also chopped, and cook until almost translucent
• add 3-4 medium sized carrots in bite sized pieces and cook covered for about five minutes
• add 1.5 cups of lentils (green or french) and 3/4 cup of yellow split peas (or stub lentils for all... we were just going for color and then they all looked the same, but tasted delicious)
  
• Add one large can of diced tomatoes and fill the pot with vegetable or chicken broth, adding 2-3 bay leaves and several sprigs of fresh thyme

• bring to a simmer and cook covered for 40 min (to test, make sure the lentils aren't crunch in the middle)
• turn the heat off the pot and stir in one bag of arugula, letting it wilt in
• Serve!!!

Baba Ganooooush!

• cut an eggplant in half lengthwise, stab it with a fork a few times, and bake is at 400 for about 45 minutes (when you cut it open and it's all mushy and brown instead of white, it's done)

• let cool, then scrape insides of eggplant into a food processor, discarding skin.
• add the juice from half a lemon, about a spoonful of tahini (make sure you stir it well before adding so it's not all clumpy), 2 cloves of garlic and some salt and blend until smooth
• Serve!!!

Spinach Garlic Eggdrop Soup

Poor Alayna was home with a fever and couldn't make it to soup night. Which is a shame because I'm pretty sure the soup we made can cure any disease as it has about 10 cloves of garlic. Daniel and Zach came over and stood in for Alayna. They helped me cook and drank my left over wine and roasted eggplant dip. (Seriously, if anyone wants roasted egg plant dip, let me know...)

Anyway, the inspiration behind this soup was that I didn't feel like buying anything for it. This is a great poor man's soup. Especially if you have an herb garden then it's pretty much just water. I don't have an herb garden. Maybe next week.

Alright, there is a new New Yorker with my name with it. Go peal some garlic my little vampires.

• In a soup pot add 2 or 3 cups of vegetable broth (optional... well, isn't everything optional)
• Add 4-6 cloves of garlic into the broth with a bay leaf, sage, parsley and a few sprigs of thyme.
• Reduce heat to a simmer and let sit covered for 20 + minutes

Meanwhile...

• In a small bowl pour in some olive oil, salt, parsley, thyme leaves and pressed garlic and use a brush to paint it on both sides of a thinly sliced baguette
• Place on a oven tray and pop in the oven at 350 F for 10 minutes... or something... just flip when browned and let sit a little longer... you know.

And go back to the soup...

• Add a bag of spinach, stir it around until it wilts
• Mix olive oil and 3 eggs in a bowl
• Add a ladle full of soup into this bowl to temper the eggs (thanks for the fancey lingo, Daniel)
• Pour this mixture into the soup pot.

Now drop a piece of miracle toast into your bowl and then ladle the soup over the bread.

It's delish!

Ummm, I can't stop making videos. I don't see this going anywhere good.