Vegan Goodness:
Today we ate:
- Breakfast: Blueberry smoothies and toast with butter for Dad and LP and cheerios and raisins with soymilk for Mom.
- Lunch: Leftover pasta with cabbage for Mom and Dad, leftover pizza for LP
- Mom had some chocolate chips with almonds for a snack.
- Dinner: Potato-Leek soup, a baguette from Whole Foods and a CSA lettuce salad
- Mom and Dad had some more apple crisp with ice cream for dessert
Money Matters:
Today we spent the following:
- $38.44 on a Whole Foods grocery trip
Friday Tips for Living Vegan and Living Cheap – with kids!:
Soup Season for Vegans
One of my favorite things about fall is the return of soup! Soups make for a warm, comforting dinner, and they can be prepped in advance. I love browsing through cookbooks for soup recipes and I also really enjoy veganizing soups. Soups are one of the best dishes to mess with when you first start tweaking since you can adjust ingredients without effecting the end product too much (unlike baking). Here are some of the strategies I use to veganize some of my favorite soups I grew up with.
Veggie Broth: Seems pretty obvious, but instead of chicken or beef broth (uck!) I use veggie broth. To save money make your own veggie broth out of veggie scraps, or use veggie bullion cubes instead of boxed or canned veggie broth.
Cream it up with . . . potatoes: I love creamy soups. Creamy potato leek, creamy tomato, creamy carrot and ginger. When I became vegan I tried to replace the cream in creamy soups with soy milk, or even soy creamer. It didn’t come out as well as I hoped, but then I landed on a solution thanks to Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. Potatoes! Specifically, yukon gold potatoes. When cut up and cook yukon golds into the soup, and then blend it, viola! Delicious, creamy soup.
Beans and Grains: Some of my old soup recipes called for meat. Rather than just substituting vegetarian “meat” products I usually add tofu, tempeh, beans, lentils or grains (like bulger wheat, or wheat berries). These add bulk to the soup and are healthier and cheaper than the other products. I have often found fun combinations that I like better than the meat version, like frozen and thawed tofu in a white chili recipe (that normally calls for chicken).
Greens, greens and more greens: A lot of my vegan cookbooks have some fantastic soup recipes, from carrot ginger soup to vegetarian farmhouse soup, etc. However, all of these soups benefit from some added greens! I usually add some chopped up kale to soups, but I also love to top creamy soup with sauteed collard ribbons or even garlic-sauteed kale.
After adjusting and veganizing some of your favorite soups finish it off with a side of bread and salad and you are in for a fantastic fall dinner!
5 thoughts on “Friday Tips: Soup Season”