Pickle Soup

You’d think something was up. While I have long given up cheesy bliss, meat-laden meals and sweet desserts*, I have been having a lot of random food cravings. Cabbage. Tahini. And now pickles. When I told Rob I drank the pickle juice after I ate the last pickle, he was concerned. That’s what pregnant people do! No worries on that front. But what’s up with the cravings?

*Full disclosure: December was filled with chocolate cravings (gosh, those cookies were so good!). I also learned that Clif and Luna bars are deadly addictive. They may be vegan, but they are junk. I have been cut-off.

In any case, I don’t feel that guilty obliging my pickle cravings. Yes, they can be a bit salty, but they can be so satisfying with their crunch and vinegary bite.

After eating more than a few unadorned, I decided to branch out and make Pickle Soup that I had bookmarked from Love Soup eons ago.

Truly, pickle soup is a misnomer. Yes, there are pickles in it but it is not a dominant flavour. Just like vinegar and lemon juice are added to enhance the balance of a soup’s flavour, pickles do the exact same thing here. They add that salty and acidic touch.

So if this isn’t a pickle soup, it is a soup filled to the brim with veggies! It has an Eastern European flavour profile with dill and cabbage but it also has a hint of thyme. The veggies are bountiful, making this a huge pot of soup – leek, delicate oyster mushrooms, celeriac, carrot, turnip, Swiss chard, cabbage, red bell pepper – as well as barley.

While the flavours don’t scream out in any sense, they mingle well together. The pickles add that extra dimension that makes you think about the soup. Use dill pickles, Polish if possible, for the nice tang. Even pickle haters could enjoy the soup since the pickles are hidden amongst the plentiful veggies.

Even though I added in even more veggies than the original recipe, substituting a few ingredients as well (celeriac, baby!), I didn’t tire of this soup.  I usually shun recipes that feed 8 people, but not this time. I relished in it. Sometimes I ate this soup twice a day!

Thankfully I think my pickle cravings subsided after a round of the soup.

What have you been craving recently?

This is my submission to this week’s Healthy Vegan Friday, to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this week’s Wellness Weekend, to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes and to this month’s No Croutons Required featuring fresh herbs.

Christmas Eve Borscht (or Barszcz)

I may be half-Ukrainian but darned if I know how to speak it. My vocabulary is limited to Я тебе люблю (Ja tebe liubliu). Some kids learn swear words, but I was only told how to love (it means ‘I love you’).

Rob is slowly introducing me to Polish words. As they pop up, obviously. The key to my heart lies in the kitchen, right? First, I learned how to say borscht. While borscht originates from Ukraine, many other countries have their own variations. In Poland, the soup is called barszcz. Notice the ah sound… and the lack of the t at the end.

Polish barszcz has numerous variations, but the vegetarian version is commonly reserved for Christmas Eve. With the bloody blazing red beets you have a very festive soup with the dilly green accent. This version, tinkered from Rebar, makes a huge pot of soup filled with vegetables – beets, cabbage, carrots and tomatoes – and white beans for good measure. Lemon juice and balsamic vinegar add that necessary tang, a key feature in Polish barszcz. Traditionally, the soup was aged to get that acidic tang. Sounds like a project to tackle in the new year.

Due to its association with Christmas, I decided to make it for the pre-Christmas dinner. Rob told me it was very similar to his family’s barszcz. I really enjoyed this soup. So did everyone else (well, except for those who shun beets and cabbage and didn’t even try it!). I found the vegetables complemented each other nicely and the Polish dried mushrooms added a deeper, complex flavour. Perfect for Christmas Eve, or any time of the year. I’ll be enjoying it a few weeks from now because I packed the leftovers in the freezer to enjoy later. This makes a ton of soup!

Happy holidays, everyone!

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend.

15-Minute White Bean and Kale Soup

While the Baked White Beans with Garlic, Lemon, and Herbs takes an hour and half to bake, it doesn’t take that long to prep. I have become used to cooking my own beans on the stovetop, and routinely cook a big batch, freezing them in 1.5 cups portions with the bean cooking liquid. This way, when a recipe calls for a can of beans, I have exactly what I need in my freezer. I also have canned beans for all my emergency bean needs because as I am learning, my freezer isn’t actually that big.

This is a super quick soup, courtesy of Tess and thus literally bursting with flavour. White beans, kale and a host of flavours (garlic, lemon, celery seed, dill) are combined for delicious results. While you usually have to simmer a soup for complex flavours, here you only have to blend and heat. Almost an instant soup. With a dirty blender and a pot.

I adapted it from Radiance 4 Life, by increasing the kale and using lemon pepper for extra zing. Funnily enough, I hate celery but don’t mind celery seeds and thought they helped create many levels of flavour. The balsamic vinegar works well for the soup as well, but it makes the soup a bit murky. If you have white balsamic vinegar, this would be the time to use it.

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to this week’s Wellness Weekends.

Warm Carrot and Flageolet Bean Salad with Dill

Thank you for all your suggestions on how you bookmark your recipes on my last post. For some reason, Google Reader doesn’t always search every post, so sometimes I resort to searching through the archives of my favourite blogs.

We all know the heavy hitters in the food blogging circles. We could argue about our top 3 blogs, but I enjoy Heidi’s blog at 101 Cookbooks and have had success with many of her creations. Even after 3 cookbooks to her name, she continues to post recipes that feature fresh and natural ingredients. One of the benefits of having a blog, instead of her cookbooks, is that it is quickly and easily searchable. When I wanted to know what to do with some leftover dill, I looked through her archives for inspiration.

I eventually settled on this seemingly simple white bean and carrot salad. It is simple to make but the flavours work really well together. This is definitely where food synergy is at play. I added my own spins to the dish, adding more carrots, using less oil and no sugar. Instead, I opted to caramelize the shallots and carrots to capitalize on their natural sweetness. Slivered almonds confer a satisfying crunch.

I froze extra flageolet beans from my last flageolet bean salad, so this was easy to whip together. The broth-infused creamy white beans were the definitive star of the salad. If you can’t find flageolets, any white bean could work like great Northern or pinto (Heidi used alubias, a kind of pinto bean). In a pinch, tinned beans could work as well but they don’t brown up as well as home-cooked beans (be mindful that they don’t turn to mush).

This salad tastes great fresh from the stovetop but also works wonderfully after a few days when the flavours have melded together even longer.

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this week’s Wellness Weekends, and to this month’s My Legume Love Affair, hosted by Cathy.

Ottolenghi’s Cabbage and Kohlrabi Salad

Delicious rejects.

It is getting close to the actual barbecue, and I am still trying out new recipes.

I honestly thought I had a winning recipe here.

You have your typical coleslaw with a vinaigrette, and then you have this coleslaw on a Middle/Eastern/European kick. First, slivered green cabbage, much loved by the Poles, is lovingly infiltrated by kohlrabi. I really enjoyed the crisp, slightly sweet julienned kohlrabi which was a perfect match to the cabbage. If you don’t have any kohlrabi, just increase the cabbage. If you have kohlrabi, make it into a slaw, as you won’t be disappointed.

Next, we have a lemony vinaigrette, which I much prefer to a creamy dressing any day. Spiced with dill, we have the Eastern European flavour palate going again. Sprouts are added for more mouth feel.

But then Ottolenghi adds the wonderful finale, his Middle Eastern flair, the best twist to the mix: dried tart cherries.

Since it is cherry season in Ontario, I tried the salad with both fresh and dried cherries, and the latter are definitely the winner. Which means everyone wins, because then this becomes a year-round salad. I also decreased the amount of dressing while adding in more vinegar, increased the sprouts and substituted some dill seeds since I didn’t have enough fresh dill.

However, despite how much I loved this salad, and figured it played with the perfect palate for feeding Rob’s Polish family (cabbage, lemon, DILL), he vetoed the salad. Poof! Just like that, it disappeared from the menu.

Their loss is my gain, because I have been eating this salad all week and pretty content that I don’t have to share it with anyone.

The sad part is that I am still wondering what kind of salad to make for the Poles…

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, and to this month’s Simple and in Season and to Ricki’s new Summer Wellness Weekends.

Greek Baked Beans (Gigantes Plaki)

Toronto is having its first long heat wave of the summer. Tomorrow’s forecast is for a high of 38C and who knows what it will feel like with the humidity. It is a positive sauna outside and I don’t like it one bit!

Figures that all I want to make are baked beans. Turning on my oven when my house is already 28C inside. I must be nuts.

Nuts for beans, of course!

I am not bent on making your typical ooky sweet ketchup baked beans. I’ve already done the non-traditional, but uber delicious Mango BBQ Beans (not baked but the stovetop preparation makes this much more summer friendly!). I am talking around-the-world type of baked beans.

Because, every country has a different spin on the classic bean dish.

As Canadians, we add maple syrup.

Apparently vegan New Brunswick-style is to use blackstrap molasses and ginger for a zippy punch.

Or I could go more into southern soul cooking, using baked black eyed peas.

How about Mexican-style with Anasazi Beans Baked with Ancho Chile?

Then there’s Sephardic White Beans with Leeks.

Substitute the leeks with onions, add allspice, cinnamon and cloves, and you have Syrian baked beans.

Or, for a Tuscan influence, bake your white beans with sage and tomatoes. Or try it with rosemary and thyme, instead.

If you were Serbian, you’d bake your white tetovac beans with sweet paprika.

When in Nigeria, you might add curry powder, cumin, coriander, and peanut butter.

A quick glance onto my back porch, with its bountiful flat-leaf parsley, steered me into the direction of Greek Baked Beans (Gigantes Plaki), where giant lima beans are baked with a luscious tomato sauce spiced with smoked paprika, oregano, garlic, parsley and dill.  Already a creamy bean, the giant lima bean is brought to a silky high as it is baked in a delicious sauce. Baking confers even heat distribution and somehow allows the beans to continue to become creamy without losing its shape. Lima beans, if overcooked, can quickly disintegrate into mush if you don’t watch them carefully while they are cooking. Browning the beans during the last 15 minutes, allows a slightly crusty exterior to the top beans. The mixture of textures is wonderful.

Serve slightly warm, or at room temperature, with slices of bread, or just as is, which is my preference along with a sprinkling of fresh herbs.

I fully intend to explore the world of baked beans, one country at a time.
Continuing after the heat wave has subsided, though.

This is my submission to this month’s My Legume Love Affair, hosted by Susan, to E.A.T. World for Greece, to this month’s Simple and in Season and to Ricki’s new Summer Wellness Weekends.

Warm Leek and Flageolet Bean Salad with a Mustard Dressing

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekends, be it celebrating July 1 or July 4.

I was telling my Mom about my low-key Canada Day plans….

Well, first we went grocery shopping…

WHAT?!, she exclaimed. All the grocery stores are closed here.

True, the big chain grocery stores were closed on Friday, but that didn’t stop Sunny’s (or Bestwin or even T&T) from being open. Sunny’s, my current favourite grocery store, is located in Flemingdon Park, the Toronto neighbourhood with the highest percentage of immigrants (67% of its residents, with 23% recent immigrants). Sunny’s advertises over 10 languages its staff can speak, and it truly offers a multicultural grocery experience. Due to its local clientele, the prices are great and the produce is fresh. And it was open on Canada Day. Hourray for me!

BBQs are in full swing now at our place, even though we are still living out of boxes. Rob has chosen to take full advantage of the barbecue, grilling up various kinds of meats for guests, whereas I typically reign in the salad department. I have revisited some of my old favourites, and of course, tried out a few new ones that will be shared shortly, including this lovely warm leek and white bean salad.

White beans are combined with caramelized leeks and smothered in a light mustard sauce. I was mostly inspired by the recipe from Waitrose since I adapted it quite a bit. I increased the amount of leeks, used dill instead of parsley, added in lemon pepper and simplified their mustard dressing. I like how creamy dressing can get with mustard alone!

You can bring your bean salad to the next level by cooking up your own beans with complementary flavours. Here, I opted to cook my own flageolet beans in vegetable broth and rosemary for additional flavour. Cook up more beans than you need, freeze the extra with the stock and you can whip up another tasty white bean salad in a heart beat. Tinned beans would work too, if you haven’t yet converted to cooking your own beans (I had a hard time locating dried flageolet beans in Toronto, let alone canned flageolets, though!).

While you could use any white bean (cannellini/white kidney, Great Northern, or even something smaller like navy or black eyed pea, etc), after delving into my heirloom bean collection, I have realized wonderful novelty beans can be! The first bean I tried was the green flageolet. I found it locally at Rube’s Rice in the St Lawrence Market, so thankfully I can easily replenish my pantry (instead of outsourcing my supply from the US!). Flageolets are smaller white beans, but deliciously smooth and creamy. They are commonly used in the French cassoulet, but here, they make this salad shine.  I look forward to trying other ways of using these delicious beans over the summer.

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this month’s My Legume Love Affair, hosted by Susan and to this month’s Simple and in Season.

Quinoa and Red Lentil Kitchari

A week ago was the big move. From condo to house. You wouldn’t believe how much can accumulate in a 1 bedroom apartment, especially when you have a fondness for cookbooks and dried beans. All my houseplants don’t make it that easy to move, either, but I was incredibly grateful for everyone’s help to move us into our new place.

When helping with a move,  there are ways to help even if you don’t have lots of muscle power (like me!). My mom, even though she can pump more weight than me by far, so thoughtfully, offered to help by making a veritable feast for everyone helping with the move. Everyone raved about the Mango BBQ Beans which were better this time with black eyed peas, and as usual my mom made a nice buttermilk-based coleslaw from America’s Test Kitchens, our family French Potato Salad, hummus with hamburgers and sausages for the carnivores.   As a forward-thinker, she made tons of food so there were leftovers. This way, Rob and I didn’t have to think about making food for a while. And feed our friends both lunch and dinner, since it took that long to help us move.

Once all the boxes were moved in, we made sure we had a bed with sheets so we could crash that night. My next priority room was the kitchen (it took 5 days for me to hook my laptop to the internet!). While pantry items are still all over the place in unpacked boxes, the major appliances, knives, cutlery, plates, spices, etc, have all found a place in the kitchen. I could wiggle my way around the kitchen by the end of the weekend which felt great.

The first meal I made in our new home was this Quinoa and Red Lentil Kitchari, adapted from The 30-Minute Vegan. I wanted something quick, tasty and healthy. This is an endlessly variable recipe, throwing in your favourite vegetables, mixing up the herbs, swapping the miso and ginger for lime juice or toasted sesame oil.

Kitchari, according to Reinfeld, is a healing meal according to Ayurveda, a traditional medicine from India. At its core, it is a mixture of two grains, in this case quinoa and red lentils, which both cook up quickly. Other recipes use mung beans and basmati rice with more traditional Indian flavours, but really anything goes.

This was a simple porridge-type stew, like a lentil-based dal with crunchy quinoa. Not only was this a great dish to eat, it was simple to prepare without too much fuss.  I could throw in any vegetable and work with the herbs in the garden, and the items I still had left in my fridge. In this version, you have great texture from the cabbage and colour from the carrots. We debated which flavour was more pronounced, but I thought the dill worked great with the hint of miso. My friend thought ginger was more prominent. In any case, we all enjoyed it.

When life seems to be so chaotic, it was great to come back to eat this and bring me back to some peace.  I just haven’t figured out the best place to photograph my meals in the new house! The scourge of an East-facing kitchen.

This is being submitted to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Cinzia from Cindystar.

Six Shades of Red Soup (Beet, Potato and Red Lentil Soup with Dill)

Despite being of Central and Eastern European descent, I actually don’t cook many German or Ukrainian dishes (mainly special treats, though). However, Rob’s parents are very keen on traditional Polish food, and when they came to visit last weekend to help with the burgeoning garden, I wanted to create a meal that everyone would enjoy.

I knew the raw kale salad with beets was a hit over Easter, so I figured I would pick a dish that had similar familiar ingredients: beets, potatoes and dill. That may sound so boring and bland, but I knew I hit jackpot when I spotted the Six Shades of Red Soup in Color Me Vegan (original recipe posted here). It was a virtually fat-free soup filled with red lentils, red potatoes, beets, (red) onion, dill and the perfect twist: red miso. The sixth shade of red was from vegetable juice, which I omitted. I also increased the dill and pureed half the soup for a creamier consistency.

As you can see, this was a beautiful soup.  It deepened in colour overnight and the flavours melded wonderfully. It was creamy, yet chunky, with sweetness from the beets but structure from the potatoes with a hint of dill and a depthness brought from the red miso.

I am happy to report that it met the approval of the traditional Polish folk. Not your traditional borscht, different, but in a  good way, is how they put it and invited me to make it again anytime. Me, redo a recipe? By request from special people only!

This made a ton of soup, with generous servings, so I was able to enjoy the leftovers. The soup doubled as a perfect meal while cycling last weekend. With the long distances, I prefer to eat more liquid-based foods (ie, soup! homemade sports drink! smoothies!) and this hit the spot. It was light on my stomach and jammed full of vegetables and miso providing sodium and potassium, which is important to replenish when exercising.

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this month’s My Legume Love Affair, hosted by Served with Love and to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes, founded by Ruth’s Kitchen Experiments and hosted by Jacqueline.

Orange Beet Soup

I should judge the difficulty of recipes on my ability to make them after a bike ride (yam and black bean stew, I’ve got my eyes on you!). To be honest, I don’t think any of my recipes are hard to make (heck, even I can make it!) but I know some can be lengthy, especially if dried beans are involved.

Last weekend, I cycled to Kitchener with a friend. We opted to take a shorter route home, cycling to the Aldershot GO Station in Burlington and training the rest of the way home. I cycled 209km that weekend, and with the shorter distance on Sunday, it meant I was home by 3:30pm and able to do some weekend chores.

Um, no. Utter fail.

I got as far as: a) blending myself a recovery smoothie with banana and maca; b) during the post-ride euphoria, calling Rob to tell him I arrived alive; c) taking a nice warm bath; d) throwing all my cycling clothes in the washing machine to get washed;  e) making this soup; f) unexpectedly catching up with an old friend over the phone for an hour…. Giving my mom a well-deserved (brain-supported) phone call, unfortunately was not in the cards (=biggest failure).

Thank goodness I still had some delicious leftover raw pad thai for dinner that I picked up from Thrive Juice Bar in Waterloo (which travelled incredibly well over 80km on my bike!). (Their big green juice with maca was also exactly what I needed when I finally arrived in Waterloo).

Anyways, I had a few recipes on my week’s menu, but was only able to muster enough energy to make this Orange Beet Soup, adapted from The 30-Minute Vegan. I figured it would be a simple thing to throw together and should take under 30 minutes, right?

Obviously, in my post-cycle haze, my coordination (hand and mental) decrease. It took me more like 45 minutes and I didn’t even grate my vegetables by hand (thank you food processor!) plus another 15 minutes to clean (curse you food processor!) . I peeled my beets which took up a lot of time, and probably unnecessary in retrospect.

Also problematic: juicing my oranges. 1.5 cups of freshly squeezed orange juice. By me armed with my lemon squisher. 4 oranges later and many more minutes later, I had it all. Reinfeld may suggest 1-2 oranges, but that is impossible! Unless you get so much more juice with a juicer? Or pick an incredibly juicy one from a tree in Florida? Because I use all the pre-juicing tricks: microwave for 20 seconds, smash it and roll it around on the counter. And it took me just over 3 oranges.

Anyways, I will see if my kitchen speed increases if I were to make this at any other time.

Because this is a great soup and should get repeated. Like when I have a garden filled with beets (oh yes!).

Simple ingredients layer to create a nice, light, flavourful soup. Beet is at its core, but it is sweet from the layers of  orange and carrots. The dill add another dimension with a nod to the Eastern European pairing of beet and dill, and the red miso creates that subtle complexity.

This soup is great warm and chilled. Chilled, it is a refreshing and bright starter and if I had a high-powered blender, this would make this the ultimate savoury summer drink (my immersion blender left a bit of pulp, which is fine for something labelled as soup).

After hanging up with my friend, it was 7pm, and I was positively pooped. I didn’t even photograph the soup. Yet. (It was photographed as leftovers the next day, which is also when my mom got the brain-active phone call she deserved!).

I cleaned up my kitchen and called it a night and fell asleep around 8pm, before the sun had even gone to bed.

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays.

Spinach Orange Yam Soup

Sometimes you are destined to make a recipe. Everything was leading me towards this soup:

1) I got a lemon squeezer for Christmas! Perfect for squeezing small oranges as well.

2) My mom gave me her second garlic press (I never thought I needed one, but it is great for salads)

3) My mom offloaded a case of oranges/clementines onto me before her vacation

4) I had 2 yams in my fridge that needed to be used PRONTO

5) Baby spinach was on sale

6) I borrowed ExtraVeganZa from the library and was reading it over the holidays

7) Have I mentioned how much I love soup?

Even though I wasn’t expecting much, I am so glad I followed all the clues.

The stars were aligned properly, though: this soup was phenomenal. I was blown away by its taste. Healthy food does not need to be bland!

This soup was both incredibly delicious, healthy and a snap to put together. I adapted the original recipe from ExtraVeganZa only slightly, with less oil and likely more yam. This soup was silky smooth from the pureed yams.  I rarely go to the trouble of squeezing my own orange juice, but with an overabundance of citrus and a new lemon squeezer, I had no excuses.  The freshly squeezed juice is paramount for this recipe. The delicate splash of citrus made this a light-tasting soup, and the extra dimension came from the dill and ginger. They really brought the soup to the next level with the curiosity it raised with each spoonful. The soup would likely be great without the spinach, but the extra bulk made this a soup with texture. A perfect play from winter’s finest characters. It brought a smile to my face with its first bite.

Here are other soups with orange that have piqued my curiosity:

Black Bean Soup with Orange Zest at Recipe Trezor
Carrot and Orange Soup with Ginger and Thyme at She’s in the Kitchen
Honeyed Carrot and Orange Soup at Tasty Kitchen
Balkh Brown Lentil Soup at Vegan Feast Kitchen
Caspian Butternut Squash Soup with Bulgur at Vegan Eats and Treats

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, and to Torview for her green Food Palette event.

French Barley Salad with Carrots, Green Beans, Red Peppers and Almonds

Before I began to blog, I used to post my food pics with its recipe on Facebook. My friends urged me to go public, to share my joy of food and photography with many more people and I am so glad I made to leap to the blogosphere. I really enjoy being part of the food blogging community, where I have met some really awesome people so far. I hope to continue to be pushed to try new dishes, meet new people, etc, over time.

In honour of the 100th post on the blog, I thought I would bring everyone back to where it all began. The first picture in my “Food Porn” album is the above pic. Over Thanksgiving, I made an incredibly delicious French Barley Salad that I Ashley posted at Eat Me, Delicious, which was adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special (which I already owned!). The food was so delicious it got a spotlight in my Thanksgiving 2008 album and also kickstarted my food photography.

It is through practice and reflection that we improve, and I know my photos have improved over the past couple of years. So when I remade the salad recently, I still took its photo… of the leftovers, though, and sadly my photography skills were not at their peak. Can I blame it on my parents having prettier bowls? Nah….  One step forward and two steps back.. sounds like I am dancing backwards? Well, at least it is a tasty trip backwards.

In reflection of where I’ve been culinarily since the beginning of the blog, I added a new category to the blog highlighting my favourite dishes. Enjoy!

This is my submission to Cooking with Whole Foods – Whole Grains, featuring barley, this week’s Weekend Wellness, this week’s BSI featuring green beans, and to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays (which also includes salads).

Orzo Salad with Pan-Fried Chickpeas, Dill, and Lemon

I love the summer because all of a sudden fresh produce abounds, overflowing with flavour. It is a perfect time for salads, using fresh herbs, and enjoying simple dishes that showcase summer fare.  I originally spotted this tasty salad at Eat Me, Delicious who adapted it from Cooking Light (August 2002). I am weary of plain chickpeas, and I remembered my really delicious warm chickpea and artichoke salad and figured I would incorporate pan-fried chickpeas with this dish to up it a notch. I was not disappointed.

This is a delicious orzo salad brimming with fresh dill and spring onions, a slight lemony tang and this is coupled with creamy, nutty roasted chickpeas. The orzo has a delicious slippery texture that complements the chickpeas well.  The next time I make it, I would consider replacing the orzo with something else though. Perhaps wild rice? Or a grain like quinoa? The possibilities are endless for summer salads!

This is my submission to Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice for Magazine Mondays, this week’s Weekend Wellness,, this month’s Side Dish Showdown, to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to Presto Pasta Nights, hosted by me this week!

Dill and Cheddar Beer Bread

There is nothing better than fresh bread right from the oven.When the bread is warm, chewy and literally melts in your mouth. Bliss! Bread need not be difficult to make, and I have had great success with homemade bread (including numerous recipes from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which was great because you could bake small loaves every few days from the same starter batch), but I had yet to make one of those cheese breads you see in the stores. The ones with the goops of melted cheese sprinkled amongst the bread.

I finally decided to try my hand at a cheese bread after being intrigued by a dill and cheddar beer bread posted at Eat Me, Delicious, and originally found at Farmgirl Susan. A beer bread? A bread without yeast? Dill and cheddar, oh my! So off I went and assembled this ridiculously easy bread and popped it in the oven.

First of all, as you could probably imagine this is not your traditional bread (no yeast!) and as such it was a dense loaf. That, coupled with the slight beer tang, is my only gripe. I was hoping for something more fluffy, but I thought the dill and cheddar flavours were delicious. The beer tang mellowed the following day, but that defeats the glorious good times of eating half a loaf of bread straight from the oven.

This is my submission to this month’s No Croutons Required featuring bread. This dish would be perfect with a simple soup as this bread has such complex flavours itself.

Hungarian Mushroom Soup

Over the long weekend, I went cross border shopping. Yes, me, the Queen of Not Shopping (save grocery shopping, because I LOVE that!), drove 5 hours to an outlet mall in Michigan. I bought some clothes, but one of my must-visit destinations was Penzeys, a spice store in Detroit. Aimee at Sugared Ellipses mailed me some small containers of various spices from Penzeys in the fall, and let’s just say I fell in love with them. I already needed a refill.

I perused Penzeys’ catalogue and thought I knew what I wanted to buy. I thought! I never knew visiting a spice store could be that much fun. The difference with Penzeys is that there are so many different kinds of spices that you have to smell them to understand the differences. For paprika, did I want Hungarian, Californian or Spanish?  Californian has the best colour but Hungarian the best flavour (who cares about looks anyways?, says the food blogger). Spanish is more all-around goodness. Thankfully someone was there to help me sniff every single one of them, and then again and even a third time, before I decided to stick with Hungarian paprika. But then there was other question – sweet or half-sharp? Sweet it was with its smokey flavour and my virgin palate.

Hungarian sweet smoked paprika is definitely one of my new favourite spices because of its smokey full flavour without too much heat. I already used it in a spiced brownie but it was mixed with a few spices. This soup really lets the paprika shine.

A creamy mushroom soup, without cream (wait, does sour cream count?) with a hint of fresh dill and the smokiness of the paprika really sets this soup apart from the pack. I really liked the soup with shiitakes, but that’s because I am a sucker for Japanese ‘shrooms.

This soup was originally posted at Allrecipes.com, and posted by some of my favourite food bloggers. It was time for me to follow in their foot steps.

This is my submission to this week’s Blogger Secret Ingredient event, featuring Paprika, hosted by PreventionRD. I am also sending this to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays .