Homage to Julia - A Simple Soup

Of course I love Julia Child. Who doesn't? Why wouldn't you? If you've read her biography/autobiography, "My Life In France" then you know what a remarkable woman she really is. She had never cooked until she was married at a very late age. She went to France, tasted the most amazing thing she had ever put in her mouth and a few months later was one of the only women to enroll in Le Cordon Bleu. She proceeded to write one of the most influential and well known cookbooks in the nation. Not only did she write it, but she tested and retested every single recipe in those 700 some pages. I'm no Julie Powell here, I'm not about to go and make a beef flavored aspic with a soft boiled egg suspended in the middle, but you bet your ass I'll make a soup with 4 ingredients:

1 lb. potatoes, peeled and diced
1 lb. leeks, thoroughly rinsed and sliced
2 quarts water
1 T. salt
5 T. butter*
3/4 c. cream*
pepper
parsley for garnish

Place potatoes, leeks, water, and salt in a large soup pot. Bring to a boil a cover slightly, simmer for about 40 minutes until potatoes are soft. Transfer soup to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth, working in batches if needed. Add butter and cream to pureed soup mixture and top with pepper and parsley. Yum.

Ok, so brutally good soup. I wish I could take credit but this one belongs to Julia and the wonderful people of France. To accommodate both myself and Spencer I put 1 T real butter and 2 T cream in my bowl and then added the soup. For Spencer I put equal amounts of earth balance and soy cream in his bowl. We ate it with some delicious fresh bread from the bakery up the street and both agreed that it was amazingly good. And as a testament to that, he didn't even run to the kitchen for more salt, pepper, or red pepper flakes. Thank you, thank you.

A Mountain of Chili

Sorry for the lapse in posts. It's not that I haven't been cooking, lord knows I have (as does spencer and my growing stomachs). I still have yet to find my camera charger and just can't get motivated to write without some visual stimulation. However, today is the day I will delve into the depths of the dungeon which is my basement and search that rascally device out. Hopefully I'll be able to update this post with a glorious shot of my beautiful chili.

I found this recipe after a very quick search on the googinator. I'm basically copy and pasting it, so I can't take credit for much of this unfortunately.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon salt
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 (4 ounce) cans chopped green chile peppers, drained
2 (12 ounce) packages vegetarian burger crumbles
3 (28 ounce) cans whole peeled tomatoes, crushed
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 (15 ounce) can kidney beans, drained
1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, drained
1 (15 ounce) can black beans
1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the onion, and season with bay leaves, cumin, oregano, and salt. Cook and stir until onion is tender, then mix in the celery, green bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, garlic, and green chile peppers. When vegetables are heated through, mix in the vegetarian burger crumbles. Reduce heat to low, cover pot, and simmer 5 minutes.
Mix the tomatoes into the pot. Season chili with chili powder and pepper. Stir in the kidney beans, garbanzo beans, and black beans. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 45 minutes. Stir in the corn, and continue cooking 5 minutes before serving.

So only a couple modifications to this recipe. Some of you may know my disdain for green bell peppers, the rest of you know now. I used red and yellow ones instead, much to my happiness. Green peppers taint everything they touch and I hate it. I also threw in a little brown sugar because that's just how I roll. Probably could've used a bit more. I also used just one package of fake ground meat. It was plenty, let me tell you. This makes a shitload of chili. It says 8 servings, which seems about right. The proportions are good though so I don't know how you'd half it, considering the cans of beans and whatnot. Anyway, we ate our chili with some premade cornbread from whole foods (his vegan, mine delightfully yellow and full of eggs) as well as some very convincing fake cheese.

So that's it for now. I've got an apple strudel coming up that should be very exciting for everyone, filled with mystery, passion, and intrigue. I'm also planning on making some non vegan desserts so get your senses ready for a taste explosion... or maybe just get ready for another mundane list of ingredients.