Barley's the Best Soup

(Alayna got dressed and put on makeup for this picture. This blog is a big deal.)

Big News! I voted this soup the best of ALL the soups we have had to date. And I know, I know what you're thinking. "Great. This is the third soup on the blog." Well, let me tell you a little secret we have made more than three soups. The ones that don't make the blog have nothing to do with the quality of the soup and everything to do with my overall laziness. I regress, point being, I think this soup is the best.

Alayna won't make the grand statement yet, but I will. Anyway, we made this soup on the wonderful, workless Martin Luther King day. That was good because it was easy to let the barley soak for three hours (who knew?). There was a light nice snow fall. I bought two big canvases in Soho. Alayna got her bangs trimmed. Great day. Great soup. Here you go...

Ingredients

1 cup of barley

chicken broth

one large onion

three leaks (white and light green parts only!)

two large carrots

a few celery sticks

olive oil

two fistful of shitake and baby portabella mushrooms

1/3 cup of fresh parsley

rosemary sprigs

3 to 4 boneless skinless chicken thighs, chopped into bite size pieces

Do This...

-cover 1 cup of barley in cold water and let it soak at least 3.5 hours

-once it has soaked, put into your soup pot and cover with about 9 cups of chicken broth and simmer... it will need to simmer for another 1 to 1.5 hours so don't get hungry yet

-in a seperate pan, sautee in order half a large onion, three leeks, two handfuls of carrots and a handful of celery in olive oil for about five minutes

-once things are sauteed nicely but still crispy, dump them into the soup pot!

-slice up shitake and baby portabella mushrooms and throw them into the pot too

-get about 1/3 cup of fresh parsley, chopped, into the pot, and rosemary sprigs (not the stalks) into the soup

-chop up 3-4 chicken and sautee in pan you used for the veggies (add more olive oil). Once pieces are cooked through toss them in the pot (there is a theme here)

-let the soup simmer for the rest of the 1 to 1.5 hours OR until the barley and veggies are nice and tender... enjoy!

Butternut Squash Soup

Friends love soup.

Oh no, someone ate too much soup!

A favorite for all. Even our precious semi-vegan, always-inspiring roommate Kate came home and asked for a bowl. This is a good soup for the dark days of winter when you forget how sunlight feels. When the bright orange color of the soup might awaken your senses...

Sorry.This post intro is getting dumber by the sentence. It's Thursday night. It's dark and snowing and I'm tired and I just watched two episodes of Top Chef alone while drinking Red Stripe and eating Ramen Noodles and I don't know what I want to do with my life.

Right, so, ladies and gentlemen... drum roll... Bitternut Squash Soup*

*It's not really called "Bitternut" fools. It's a joke, as in I was Bitter. But no one got it, so I changed the title. Maybe the joke's on mehhhh.

What You Need:

olive oil
1 yellow, medium sized onion
2 to 3 tablespoons of minced fresh ginger
1 butternut squash peeled and diced
1 sweet potato and a yam or two... which combined are about the sizeof the squash
6 cups of water
chicken or veggie stock
salt and peppa

1. Heat the oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion andcook, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the ginger and stirtogether until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the squash, sweetpotatoes, regular potato, and water or stock, and bring to a simmer.Add salt to taste, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 30-45minutes, oruntil all of the ingredients are thoroughly tender.

2. Takeout the soup in batches and blend... for thicker soup, youwon't include all of the broth, but make sure you get all the gingerand onion for extra deliciousness!!

3. add salt and pepper to taste.
Enjoy!

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