Whenever I’m feeling kind of low or my arthritis is flaring up, I turn to soup. So yesterday, feeling both low and not physically at my best, I came up with this easy recipe for a cheesy vegetable soup for dinner.

Now, for those who know me personally, please don’t worry about either my mental health or my physical well-being. Every once in a while, when I read about all the morons out there who cause trouble just for the shear pleasure of doing so, their antics over-whelm me. I simply can’t understand or empathize in any way with their stupid and destructive behavior. I lose all ability to sympathize in any way with their fundamental right to be nitwits. In other words – I want to take a bucket of ice water and pour it over their heads. Or better yet, become Marshall Dillon and throw all their racist, destructive, malevolent butts in jail. And, throw away the key! I know. Tell me how you really feel, Patti!

But as much as I try to stay mad or moody or depressed, it only lasts for a day or so. Then my usual calm and equanimous nature springs back and I once again feel magnanimous towards all my fellow denizens of mother earth. (Well, most of them anyway!) And because of fast acting drugs, I can usually force my arthritis into submission within a couple of days also. So, like I said, not to worry. I’m much better today. But back to this soup.

I had some bacon that needed to be used. I also had a small green pepper on its last legs (so to speak), and some broccoli that was well past its pull date. (I know. Fresh veggies don’t come with pull dates. But if they did……) Anyway, I decided a nice hearty vegetable soup would be just what the doctor ordered. But not too healthy. Considering my mood and joint pain, I felt in need of comfort. And of course, felt I well deserved it too. Mr. C. offered to either cook dinner or go pick something up, but I had been inactive all day. And as I am fond of saying, busy hands are happy hands. (No, I don’t always say that. But it has always worked out that way for me!) So, to the kitchen I proceeded.

And after spending all of an hour plotting, planning, hacking, slashing, cooking, and simmering, dinner was on the table. And I felt better. Not only about the state of the world, but my arthritis seemed to have taken the hint and faded into the background.    

So, if you too have days when life seems more difficult than usual, may I take this opportunity to recommend soup. There is just something about a big old bowl of soup that fairly screams “it’s going to be OK”!

As always, treasure the good times, work through the rough patches, and don’t let others influence your feelings of joy and happiness. Peace and love to all.

6 oz. meaty thick bacon, cut into small pieces

1 carrot, shredded

2 celery stalks, thinly sliced

½ med. onion, finely chopped

1 green pepper, finely diced

3 lg. garlic cloves, finely minced

freshly ground black pepper

3 c. water

2 tsp. chicken base (I use Better Than Bouillon Chicken base)

dash hot sauce, such as Frank’s RedHot Sauce

2 c. chopped broccoli (I cut the broccoli into small bite-sized pieces)

2 T. flour

1 c. milk   

1 sm. (4 oz.) jar sliced pimentos, drained 

2 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese, or more to taste

¼ c. loosely packed fresh parsley

Fry the bacon in a large, covered soup pot until crisp. Remove the bacon leaving about tablespoons of the grease in the pan. Add the carrot, celery, onion, and green pepper; cook until the onion is soft. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the black pepper, water, chicken base, and hot sauce. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the broccoli and cook for a couple minutes or until crisp tender.  

Whisk the flour and milk together. Add to the pot and stir until the soup is bubbling and thick. Add the sliced pimentos, cheddar cheese, cooked bacon, and parsley. Let simmer for a minute, then remove from heat. Stir until the cheese melts completely. Taste and adjust seasoning.

I made this chowder last evening mainly because in our last farm box we received several small white-fleshed sweet potatoes. Of course as luck would have it, we already had some on hand. Now granted, we love sweet potatoes. But there is a limit to how much of any kind of food I want to eat or serve several nights in a row. (And yes that includes chocolate and hamburgers!) So then, what in the heck to do with all the bloody sweet potatoes? Mr. C. suggested just baking them, and serving in the normal manner. Which in this house means baked, split in two, slathered with butter, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. OK, that sounds good for 2 of them. Maybe even 4 of them. But that still leaves me with a small crops worth still to be dealt with. But I’m always up for a good challenge. So to the internet I proceeded.

I’ve been on a real soup and chowder kick lately, so that’s the direction I decided to take. And oh am I glad I did. I found the basics for this recipe on the runningonrealfood.com site. When I told Mr. C. about the recipe, he asked me those three little words every cook knows are eventually going to come out of someone’s mouth when chowder is mentioned – “is there bacon”? I told him bacon was not in the original recipe, but it certainly would make a fine addition. So this recipe includes bacon. It also includes a wee bit of crushed red pepper flakes and fresh parsley. (I use crushed red pepper flakes a lot in my cooking. Not much, just a few flakes to keep things interesting. I also include fresh parsley whenever possible.)

As you glance through the recipe, you will note, that with the exception of the tiny bit of fat rendered as the bacon fries, there is no other fat included. There are also no dairy products. So this is a fairly low fat and healthy chowder. And truly, it doesn’t need any shredded cheese or sour cream. It is perfect unto itself. And I could have left it as such. But no, I decided to accompany the chowder with buttermilk biscuits. And not just any buttermilk biscuits.

I had developed a recipe for Huntsman Cheese and Chive Buttermilk Drop Biscuits that I was anxious to try. So I did. And I am here to tell you, the biscuits were outrageously delicious and went really well with this amazing chowder. So my next post will be for the biscuits I served last evening. But back to this recipe.

The first thing I need to mention is that this chowder is truly delicious. And to make it all the more appealing, very easy to prepare. And for all of you for whom time is of the essence when preparing dinner, there is no long simmering required to produce the lovely depth of flavor base for this chowder. And truly, I can’t think of any reason even the most picky of eaters wouldn’t enjoy this dish. So there you go. Dinner in a pot.

So as always, keep preparing and serving delicious food to your family.   And especially with winter just around the corner, remember that nothing says warm and cozy, healthy and happy, safe and cherished, like a big old bowl of soup or chowder. (Of course chocolate chip cookies work well too.)      

We are all going to be subjected to a long and isolated spell of being housebound until Covid-19 is brought under control. And having to stay inside because its winter is definitely not going to make life easier for any of us. In fact, just the opposite. But the more we as cooks can do to help our families cope with the boredom and stay as healthy as possible, the better. And there’s no better way I can think of to make that happen than by preparing interesting, healthy, and delicious food. If nothing else, it will be fun to tell your family all about a new dish when you are invariably asked what’s for dinner. If it happen to be this chowder you are preparing at the time, I would advise starting the discourse with the first ingredient listed below. Peace and love to all.

4-6 strips of meaty, thick bacon, cut into small pieces

1 c. chopped onion

2 stalks celery, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 c. (more or less) cubed sweet potato  

3 c. vegetable broth, or additional broth if you like a more liquid base for your chowder

2 tsp. chili powder  

1 tsp. paprika  

pinch crushed red pepper flakes

¼ tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

1 red bell pepper, diced

2 c. (more or less) frozen corn

1 T. chopped fresh parsley  

Fry the bacon until very crisp in a heavy soup pot. Using a slotted spoon, remove the bacon to a medium sized mixing bowl. Set aside.

Add the onion and celery to the pot and cook until the onion starts to soften. (The onion will also start to get a little brown from the bits left behind while frying the lean bacon.) Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.

Add the sweet potato, broth, chili powder, paprika, crushed red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Bring to a light simmer and cook for 5 minutes.

Add the diced red bell pepper and simmer until the sweet potato is fork tender. (Just cook until tender, not mushy.) This only takes a few minutes more. Then add the corn.

Remove about one half of the soup to the bowl with the cooked bacon. Using an immersion blender, whirl the remaining soup until it’s kind of creamy but there are still some small chunks. Then add the unblended soup back into the pot along with the cooked bacon. Taste and adjust seasoning. Bring just to a boil, stir in the parsley, and serve piping hot.

Please note: to make this chowder vegetarian, sauté the onion and celery in 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil. Then add the garlic and go from there.       

So once again it’s the beginning of soup season. Well that is, for most people. Not me. I love a good old bowl of soup year round. But I do have to admit, every year at this time the urge to make soup gets stronger. And yesterday was no exception.

I had just baked a batch of Chewy Sourdough Baguettes (recipe on this site) and thought a nice hearty vegetable soup would be the perfect accompaniment. (You realize I probably should have stated that the bread would be a perfect accompaniment to the soup. But for me, I know what comes first in my list of priorities!) Anyway, I had some Andouille sausage that needed to be eaten and I always have kale growing in a half wine barrel on the West side of our house. (The stuff grows like a weed. You can’t kill it. And the kind I have is a perennial. And I swear it lives to reproduce itself. I find baby plants in the ground all around the wine barrel.) But back to this recipe.

So researching under Andouille sausage and kale, I found the bones of this recipe on the healthyseasonalrecipes.com site. I changed things up a bit, but I still want to thank Katie for this fantastic recipe.

Now something you should know. We like our soup to have flavor. Shocking admittance, right?!?! But I have tried too many simple recipes like this one where any lovely flavors introduced into the soup completely disappear during the cooking process. (Where do you suppose they go?) Anyway, I’m really not sure how that happens, but I’ll bet you have had at least one similar experience. You start with a flavorful meat, add some veggies and herbs, and end up with a blah broth. Well, not if you make this soup. Ain’t going to happen.

(A neat trick I’ve learned over the years. When using a nicely flavored sausage like Andouille, brown it first in the oil you are going to use to cook your veggies. Then remove at least part of the cooked sausage, set it aside, and add it back towards the end of the cooking time. Then when you eat the soup, you get a nice burst of sausage flavor, not just a piece of meat with all the taste sucked out of it. But back to this recipe.)

Now let’s talk anise seed. DO NOT LEAVE IT OUT OF THIS SOUP! If you don’t enjoy licorice, fennel, or caraway, you are probably not going to like the flavor of anise seed. Therefore you might not enjoy this soup. But if you do like the flavor, you are going to love this dish. But don’t get me wrong. This is not a recipe for licorice soup. The flavor is there and it is a distinctive taste, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s simply YUM!!!

So if you would like a recipe for an easy to build soup, with simple ingredients, that doesn’t have to simmer for hours, this is the recipe for you. Plus this healthy vegetable soup is just different enough to appeal to taste buds that require constant gratification or bore easily. (Guilty as charged!)

My only mistake I made when preparing this soup was that I didn’t double the recipe. So if you have a large family or want planned-overs, I suggest you double the recipe.

As always, please vote in the upcoming election. But before casting your ballot, continue to search for the truth, consider global consequences, and above all – trust your instincts. If a food item looks rotten and smells rotten, then it probably is rotten. Throw it out! Same goes for words out of someone’s mouth. If someone is spouting hate, and derision, and condoning behavior you find repugnant, then that too is a sign of rot. And it too should be thrown out. Bad behavior should never be condoned or excused. So please, vote with your brain. Pretend you have no party allegiance. And forget the way you voted in the past. What does your brain (and your heart) tell you about each candidate? Then vote accordingly. Peace and love to all.

2 T. extra-virgin olive oil

6 oz. Andouille sausage, halved lengthwise, then again, and diced into small pieces

¾ c. diced yellow onion

1 carrot, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

¼ tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper  

1½ tsp. dry marjoram

½ tsp. anise seed

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 T. tomato paste

½ c. dry white wine

4 c. chicken broth  

½ c. pasta (I use small elbow macaroni)

4 c. chopped kale

grated Pecorino-Romano or Parmesan cheese, opt. garnish  

Heat oil in a large heavy-bottomed lidded soup pot over medium heat. Add the diced sausage and cook until it is browned. Remove the sausage from pan and set aside.

Stir in the onion, carrot, and celery, stirring often, until the veggies start to soften and the bottom of the pot is starting to brown slightly, about 5 to 7 minutes. While the veggies soften, stir in the salt, pepper, dried marjoram, and anise seed. When the veggies are softened, stir in the garlic and tomato paste. Cook for 1 minute.

Stir in the wine and cook until most of the liquid is evaporated. Add the broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer the soup for about 20 minutes.

Add the uncooked pasta, reserved Andouille sausage, and the kale. Cover the pot and return to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is al dente. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Pass the grated cheese at table. Great served with fresh sourdough baguette slices.