Soup's on!

Right before I started Operation Consumption Liberation's month of meat-free eating, I asked my Facebook friends for some vegetarian recipe suggestions.  I specifically requested fast, easy, and, above all else, filling recipes—got to get full, after all.  Now I already have at least two vegetarian cookbooks, but it’s always good to get new ideas and suggestions from one’s amigos, especially since my default for vegetarian cooking is to just make a soup.

Guess what?  My friends’ vegetarian cooking default must also be soup, because everyone’s suggestions (with the exception of one friend who suggested a recipe website) included some soupy-stew creation that is best eaten from a bowl with a spoon.  I suspect this prevalence of soup recipes may not actually be a vegetarian thing as much as an “it is autumn and the weather outside is cold and wet” thing.  Soup is kind of magical at this time of the year….  Anyway, I’m working my way through my friends’ recipe suggestions and I took pictures of the results:

 

This was an extremely filling vegetarian chili recipe from Cooking Light, which my friend Sarah recommended.  I used the wrong kind of “quick cook” barley—the flakes versus the pearls—but despite the fact that it looked like my chili contained oatmeal, the chili was pretty great: fast, easy, spicy, and super filling.  

 

My friend Christian was probably making fun of me a tiny bit when he wrote me the following: “Take two slices of bread and put cheese on the inside.  Put it in a pan and heat until the cheese is melted.  If still hungry, cook two.  Goes well with tomato soup.”  Still, a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup is AWESOME comfort food for a soggy November day.  (True confession: the soup is from the deli at Whole Foods.  But I followed the rest of Christian’s recipe exactly.)

My friend Kelly suggested this butternut squash stew.  The recipe she sent me called for “evoo” which made no sense to me whatsoever. So I turned to the Google and learned what you probably already knew: “evoo”=”extra virgin olive oil.”  Apparently a Rachael Ray thing, which explains why I was so clueless since I’ve never seen her shows.  I decided to add some Swiss chard to help me with one of my parallel November goals to add more iron-rich veggies to my diet. Very filling!

Lastly, for the other part of my parallel November goal (eating more apple and pumpkin pies), I baked this for a dinner part the other week:

That was one flaky crust!

 

And that’s it for now.  If time allows, I really do want to dive into America’s meat-eating habits next time!