Halloween Soup

Putting sausage guts in our soup. Awkward to write out, delicious to eat.

It's so spooky that Alayna and I weren't even trying to make HALLOWEEN SOUP. Neither of us put together that soaking the black beans in water for an hour and 45 minutes and using that water as the broth would dye the entire soup black. Making it the purrrrfect ghoulish soup.

Wait, what? Soaking the beans for an hour and 45 minutes? I KNOW. That's a really long time to wait. So what did we do? Uhm, figured out six different Halloween costumes based on Alayna's closet and dressed up by the soup. Because that's soupies do on Monday nights.

Here we go! Monday's Soups first Halloween! And please don't judge me for writing some of the worst captions ever.

An Egyptian adding poison to her father's soup.

"Looking into my soup bowl I see many leftovers in your future."

Stepford wife cooking away her sadness and dreaming of a future where she can take her mind out of the kitchen and into the workforce!

A Mayan Indian thinking about traditional Mayan life and how we only have 2 more years left on the calendar. What will be the last soup she makes?

Holy smokes, Bond girl is tied to the hot soup bowl and is about to die!

Thanks James Bond for annihilating that pot of soup with an electric screw driver.

Just kidding. We didn't annihilate our soup! We ate it. And now you can, too!

Shrimp / Sausage / Black Bean Spook Soup!

• put 1.5 16oz bags of dried black beans into a soup pot and fill halfway with water, bringing to a simmer
• while that's simmering, chop one fennel bulb, a white onion, three cloves of garlic, 3 large carrots and a red pepper into smallish pieces and dump into the pot
• cut open the casings of 2 sweet and 2 spicy italian sausages (or 4 mexican chorizo sausages) and break the raw meat into little pieces, dropping them into the pot
• ADD WATER WHENEVER THE SOUP DOESN'T COVER THE BEANS.... also add veggie broth powder (or salt and pepper) to taste
  
• after about 1.5-2 hours (when the beans are soft all the way through) bring the soup back up to a boil and throw in a pound of thawed frozen shrimp (no shells) for 3-4 minutes until cooked through (this is optional, but delicious)
  
• serve with shredded cheese on top

Sausage Sweet Potato Soup

Zizi likes food high in iron and fiber, like spinach.

Not to pat our own backs, but there is a lot of goodness in this soup blog besides the soup recipes alone. Lets note what Martha Rose Shulman (not related to that other set of Shulmans some of you might know...) said on March 16th in the New York Times.

"I'm convinced that one of the reasons the French diet is such a healthy one, despite the butter and cheese, is that dinner in France is often a simple vegetable soup made with whatever ingredients are fresh. Soups fill you up, they're comforting, and they offer a lot of concentrated nutrition in a bowl at a reasonable cost, both caloric and monetary. They're simple to make and forgiving."

Amen sister. Take that "This Is Why You're Fat."

Moving on. This week's soup is a marriage of two good things. Sweet potatoes and sausage. What a lovely union brought together in our soup pot. I was excited about the idea of the soup when Alayna and I were discussing it this past week and I was even more excited about the final product. Which was lighter than you'd imagine because we didn't puree the soup, so it was broth based. A good light broth which mixed well with the sweet potato and sausage, which, er, are heavier creatures. But lovely nonetheless.


I was SO excited about the final product that even as I sensed a numbing sensation in my cheeks that was slowly spreading towards my ears, I still decided on a second bowl. Alayna and I finished up and I went to do the dishes while neurotically poking my face. "I still don't feel my face," I thought quietly becoming more and more frantic. (I'm a slightly neurotic person, p.s.).
A short while later when my tongue started to itch and I was in my bedroom googling how much time I had before my throat closed I decided I should tell Alayna my situation so she would be ready to call 911 when airways were blocked. Which at this point I deemed inevitable.
Alayna, ever calm, told me I have eaten everything in the soup a million times so it probably wasn't a food allergy. She gave me a Benadryl and told me maybe I should make tea.
I thought for a moment.
"Why would tea help open my air passages?"
"Well, it probably won't. But I would really like a cup."


I survived the night. Surprise, surprise. And I don't blame the soup. I'm not sure what I blame but as Martha Rose Shulman says, soup is forgiving. And so am I.

(Update: After talking to a nurse I have concluded that my reaction was due to sushi I ate a while before, and NOT the soup. Do not fear, soup fans.)

Everything You Have Been Waiting For:

The Recipe

Sausages always look jokey.

In a big pot saute six cloves of garlic and one medium onion (chopped)

Add in about six small white potatoes and two medium sized yams (or one big one) and simmer covered until they start getting soft.

Once they are getting soft, cover, add chicken broth and bring up the heat to a low boil

In a separate pan, saute seven spicy Italian sausages, cut into bite sized pieces until cooked through.

When potatoes are almost cooked through (check by stabbing with a fork), add the sausages.

For extra wonderful taste add their delicious, delicious juices (aka scrap the grease off the pan into the soup.)

Tear up about three big handfuls of spinach and put directly into the soup, cooking for about another five minutes.

Let it be known Alayna is wearing sweatpants under her dress.

And I make soup after I come home from the gym. I'm training for a 1/2 marathon! April 26th! Who-hoo.

Souper Cheap:

All ingredients were purchased at the Essex Street Market, total cost was $10.58

For the Love of Soup

It began with sausage.

Alayna had instructed me to buy six Italian sausages from the butcher at the Essex Street Market, amongst other things. It was autumn. It was Monday. I had just gotten off work in midtown, from a job I don't much like, and had taken the subway downtown-- home. If I bought the ingredients we didn't already have, Alayna said, she would make the soup.

New York City is a lonely place but markets make you feel good and connected. The butcher called me sweetheart and it hit me like a flower. He slapped six slimy sausages on wax paper and rolled them tightly. The Chinese grocer's credit card machine didn't work. "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" she chirped running to the pastry stand, using his machine, laughing.

It cost me less than $15 to buy the ingredients we needed. Vegetables, dry beans, sausage, parsley. And Alayna made a lot of soup.

The goal of this blog is to encourage readers to make soup on Mondays. It is a lovely routine to fall into. The recipes are sized so you will make a large pot of soup for dinner-- sharing with friends and roommates-- while also allowing you to have plenty of leftovers to bring into work for lunch for several days. Most often, you shouldn't have to spend more than twenty dollars for each recipe.

I hope you enjoy your soup. And I hope you share with friends, new and old.

Mary Lorraine
My cubicle; Midtown, NY

Sausage Soup

Ingredients:

1 package of mixed dry beans
6 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
A bit of hot pepper, crushed
2 yellow onions
1 red onion
2 or 3 cups of chopped carrots
1 head of broccoli
3 or 4 handfuls of torn spinach
3 sweet Italian sausages
3 spicy Italian sausages
Parsley
1 can of chopped tomatoes
2 or 3 chicken broth cubes

*Add more or less vegetables depending on your taste, if you have veggies sitting in your fridge that you don’t think you’ll ever get around to (like peppers) toss them in.

Boil package of beans for about an hour
Chop 6 cloves of garlic and sautee in olive oil with hot pepper
add some yellow and red onion, also chopped, and sautee
add chopped carrots
add broccoli
add spinach (tear this up into smaller pieces before throwing in)
in a separate dish, cook up some sausage in bite size chunks (3 sweet, 3 spicy is my favorite combo)
once veggies are starting to get soft, add rinsed beans to the mix and a can of diced tomatoes with their juice
add some water so that the beans can soak in more (this should be on medium/low heat)
add two packets of chicken broth (above spice rack)
chop up a big handful of parsley, and a big handful of basil and toss in the pot
when the sausage is cooked, throw that into the pot too, with it's juices
let simmer for another 10-15 or longer to get soft beans, adding water as necessary