Two soups (red lentil and broccoli cheese)

It was definitely soup weather this week.

Last year my mom gave me yet another Deborah Madison cookbook: Vegetarian Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen. (I must say -- I finally returned the favor and gave Mom one of her books a few weeks ago!) I have spent many happy hours browsing in that cookbook, but I had not yet actually applied myself to to the task of making one of the recipes. This week, I fixed that oversight! And I must say, if either of these recipes are an indication, I could probably happily cook every recipe in this book and eat well for weeks/months to come.

Tonight I made the broccoli cheese recipe. I must say I'm reluctant to post recipes verbatim that I make more or less verbatim -- without any modifications to speak of, that is. And this one, I made pretty close to the recipe. I wish I'd taken pictures of the broccoli before I cooked it -- we got two ENORMOUS heads from Drumlin this week, totalling 1.75 lbs! I used it all, as well as about 0.75 lbs red potatoes. Oh, and I had no celery, so I left that out. The seasonings included marjoram, bay, thyme, cayennne, dijon mustard -- I pureed it but left a little texture.

The red lentil soup I didn't exactly follow the recipe for, and there were other modifications I wish I'd made. I think I wanted it to go in more of a curry direction: so should I post the recipe I should have made?

3 T butter

1 cup red lentils

1 cup leftover chickpeas and their broth

1 delicata squash, peeled and diced

3 carrots, cut into half moons

2 onions, diced

1 cup canned tomatoes (I used some of my own home-canned crushed tomatoes!!)

1/2 tsp cumin (should have used more)

1 tsp turmeric

salt

1 cup basmati rice, cooked in 1.75 cups water and a 1/2 tsp salt

Melt the butter; add the onions and a tsp of salt. Cook at medium for 5 minutes or so, and then add the rest of the veggies. Saute another 10 minutes or so, then add tomato, lentils and 5.5 cups of water.

I wish I'd also added a healthy tablepoon or two EACH of minced ginger and garlic, added toward the end of the vegetables getting browned. She also called for scallions to be sizzled in butter at the end and added as a garnish -- personally I'd have liked scallions just sprinkled over the top of each bowl for a garnish, but I left them out.

I served this with rice in the bottom of each bowl.