Friday, July 31, 2020

Vegan Ma-Po Tofu with Tomatoes for Cook the Books June/July Pick: "Kitchen Chinese" by Ann Mah

I'm sneaking in right under the wire for today's deadline for Cook the Books. I actually had the book finished and my dish made a few days ago but life got in the way and I wasn't able to get my  personal laptop replaced until today. Better late than never! Our book this round was Kitchen Chinese: A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself by Ann Mah, selected and hosted by my fellow Hawaii-based blogger Claudia of Honey From Rock. (You can see her announcement post here).


From my Kindle:
Isabelle Lee thinks she knows everything about Chinese cuisine. After all, during her Chinese-American childhood, she ate it every day. Isabelle may speak only kitchen Chinese--the familial chatter learned at her mother's knee--but she understands the language of food. Now, in the wake of a career-ending catastrophe, she's ready for a change--so she takes off for Beijing to stay with her older sister, Claire, whom she's never really known, and finds a job writing restaurant reviews for an expat magazine. In the midst of her extreme culture shock, and the more she comes to learn about her sister's own secrets, Isabelle can't help but wonder whether coming to China was a mistake . . . or an extraordinary chance to find out who she really is.
--Patricia Wells, author of Vegetable Harvest and We'll Always Have Paris... and Provence


I was very happy that Claudia picked this book as right now with all that is going on with life and the world, I am really appreciating lighter reads. I had read and enjoyed the author's book The Lost Vintage that I reviewed as part of a blog book tour two years ago (see that review here), and in fact, I bought Kitchen Chinese after reading The Lost Vintage but with astronomically high TBR piles on my Kindle and in print, I needed the push to get it read. I think the tagline of the book describes it best, "A novel about food, family, and finding yourself." When Isabelle Lee gets fired from her fact-checking job in New York, she heads to Beijing to regroup and to stay with her estranged sister Claire, a high-powered expat attorney. Isabelle really wants to be a serious journalist but finds herself writing about restaurants, food and life styles for an expat magazine. There are new friends and a a couple of romantic entanglements for her and her attempt to crack the walls her sister has put up. Is it a little predictable, sure... but it is charming with heart and humor and had me craving Chinese food with every page. If you like lighter foodie fiction that you can escape with, it is an enjoyable way to pass the time. If you prefer wine and vinyards and dual time periods, give The Lost Vintage a try too.   

Food Inspiration:
This book is so full of food--from the descriptions of Chinese regional cuisines at the beginnings of chapters, to the many dishes Isabelle tries in restaurants and cooks at home, to the recipes the author includes in the back. Not everything consumed is Chinese--there are plenty of other cuisines and even fusion dishes mixed in.



When it came to my bookish dish, I have really been craving Ma-Po (or Mapo) Tofu but it is hard for me to get a meat-free version at many Chinese restaurants because the minced pork is such an integral part of the dish. Recently, I bought a package of plant-based ground meat alternative on sale and I thought it would be the perfect chance to use it. I could have found a more traditional recipe or used the one the author provides in the book but I wanted to cook a Mark Bittman recipe this week to take part in I Heart Cooking Clubs potluck week, and I found his version with diced tomatoes that sounded simple and good. 


Vegan Ma-Po Tofu with Tomatoes
Slightly Adapted from Mark Bittman via TheDailyMeal.com
(Yields 4 Servings)

1 Tbsp peanut or vegetable oil
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp minced ginger
1/4 tsp red chile flakes, or to taste (I used Sriracha to taste)
4 oz ground pork (I used 12 oz Lightlife Plant-Based Ground) 
1/2 cup chopped scallions (+ extra to serve)
2 cups chopped tomatoes (canned are fine, just drain juices) (I used diced fire-roasted)
12 oz firm silken tofu, cut into small cubes
2 Tbsp soy sauce
salt, if needed
chopped fresh cilantro or scallions for garnish


Put the oil in a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat. When it’s hot, add the garlic, ginger, and chile flakes and cook just until they begin to sizzle, less than a minute. Add the pork and stir to break it up; cook, stirring occasionally, until it loses most of its pink color and begins to crisp, 3–5 minutes.
Add the scallions, tomatoes, and stock. Cook for a minute or two, scraping the bottom of pan with a wooden spoon to loosen any brown bits of meat. Add the tofu and cook, stirring once or twice, until the tofu is heated through, about 2 minutes.
Stir in the soy sauce; taste and season with salt and more red chile flakes if you like. Garnish with cilantro and serve.


Notes/Results: So simple and really delicious. This was my first time using the Lightlife Plant-Based Ground and it browned and crisped right up and the little bites I took tasted pretty close to cooked hamburger. The flavor and texture when it was mixed into the dish made it even more difficult to tell it was plant-based meat. I used entire package of the faux meat that I got on sale and certainly don't think the dish suffered for the extra. ;-) The tomatoes are not traditional but they are a nice touch that brightens the dish. I happily dug into my bowl and enjoyed it with the rice. My leftovers the next couple of days were equally good. I will happily make this dish again and I think it is one you could serve to vegans, vegetarians and meat-eaters with equal success.



It's Potluck week at I Heart Cooking Clubs so I am linking this Mark Bittman recipe there. 

I'm also sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. You can see this week's post here.


Entries are due today and Claudia will be doing her roundup on the Cook the Books site soon after. If you missed this round and you like food and books and foodie books, join us for August/September when Debra of Eliot's Eats is hosting the novel Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown.

 

Sunday, July 26, 2020

(Update--Souper Sundays Link-up is Open!) Storm Delays & Computer Issues for Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

An update to my message from Sunday (see below). We got really lucky and Hurricane Douglas veered at the last hours and bypassed the islands. Thank you to all who checked in with me here and on other social media. This one was looking pretty scary. Unfortunately regarding my computer issues, I can't get my personal computer in to be looked at by Apple until tomorrow afternoon. 

I am going to add the link up to the bottom of this page and hold off rounding up the dishes from last week's round up until this coming Sunday. Please feel free to link up your new soup, salad and/or sandwich posts now, and Sunday's roundup will include both weeks' dishes.


--------
From last Sunday:

Just a quick message to my blog readers and Souper Sundays participants. We have Hurricane Douglas bearing down on us this weekend and it's probably the most nervous for a storm I have been since I moved to Oahu nineteen years ago. Keeping my fingers crossed that it continues slightly weakening and moved slightly away from the islands.

I did make a soup and as I was posting, my laptop shut down and now has a disk utility issue. When it hurricanes, it pours. Not sure when I be able to get it fixed so in light of those two challenges, the Souper Sundays post for today will be delayed until things are under control. If you contributed a recipe this week, it will be on a round up as soon as I am able and I will get a new InLinkz link up when I can this week.

Please think positive thoughts for the Hawaiian Islands this weekend. The Big Island and now Maui seem to be past the worst, hoping for the best for the rest of us. 

-----

You can link up your soup for this week here:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

Have a happy, healthy rest of your week and stay safe out there!

 

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Ten Great Soups for Summer, a Round Up of Past Favorites for Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

Taking a little soup-making break this week because I am having a little stomach issue and nothing sounds good, not even my beloved soup. Rather than skip the post, I thought I bring you ten of my many past favorite soups for summer.

With 600-sh soup recipes on the blog, these aren't my only favorites but they are the first ones that came into my head when I was thinking of great soups for summer. There's a mix of hot and cold and a couple of fruit soups thrown in. 

Two cold soups from last year that were standouts:

Avocado Cucumber & Fennel Soup: Refreshing and great flavor, and so pretty!




Best Gazpacho: A blended gazpacho from Seville, Spain.



This fun, retro Cold & Creamy Tomato-Cucumber Soup (called a Pink Cucumber Float by the 1967 Betty Crocker Hostess Cookbook).



Not all summer soups have to be cold. Here's a few favorite warm soups and chowders that are perfect for summer. 

Thai-Flavored Corn & Potato Chowder with Crab: An oldie (2009) but a goodie that I developed to use fresh local corn.


Vegan Creole Corn Chowder: Delightfully creamy, smoky and spicy.



Farmer's Market Smoked Fish, Corn & Vegetable Chowder: Bread bowl & yum is all that needs to be said.



Nigel Slater's Summer Vegetable Laksa: Sometimes curry and noodles hit the spot in the summer.

Zucchini and Goat Cheese Soup with Basil & Lemon: Plentiful summer ingredients like zucchini and basil are delicious in this warm soup.


And back to chilled with two fruit-filled summer picks:

Chilled Watermelon & Summer Berry Soup: Sometimes you want a soup that's sweet, cold and gorgeous in the bowl and this Curtis Stone soup is a stunner.


Tomato Consommé with Cucumber and Watermelon BallsSpeaking of stunning soups and Curtis Stone, this one is a more savory fruit option and tastes and looks amazing.


I would happily make and eat any of these delicious soups again and I'll be back with a new soup next week.

Now let's see who is here in the Souper Sundays kitchen:

Shaheen of Allotment2Kitchen shared this Toasted Carrot, Green Pepper and Chickpea Tortilla Wrap saying, "also made this Curried Carrot, Green Pepper and chickpea recipe as a wrap filling, not that dissimilar from Coleslaw CurryBut instead of rolling it up, this time I pressed them in my panini press - Sorry I didn't get a picture, hunger pangs would not allow me to."


Judee of Gluten Free A - Z Blog shared another great summer soup, Yellow Beet Borsht, saying "The soup result was interesting. The yellow borsht didn't have the deep "earthy" beetroot flavor that I'm used to when we eat the red beets, but it had a sweet mellow flavor with a tinge of "earthy" taste that produced a very different, but delicious, soup that I enjoyed both hot and chilled."


Thank you to Judee and Shaheen for joining me this week!

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:
  • Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
and 

On your entry post (on your blog):
  • Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
  • You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter
Have a happy, healthy week!

 

Friday, July 17, 2020

Blog Tour book Review for "Mayhem" by Estelle Laure, Served with a Fruity Green Juice Smoothie Recipe

Happy Aloha Friday! It has been a long week and I am so happy for the weekend. To help take us there, I have a review the new young adult novel, Mayhem by Estelle Laure and accompanying my review is a Fruity Green Juice Smoothie, inspired by the book.


Back Cover Blurb:

The Lost Boys meets Wilder Girls in this supernatural feminist YA novel.

It's 1987 and unfortunately it's not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy"s constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem's own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren't like everyone else. 

But when May's stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem's questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good. 

But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost. 

From the acclaimed author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back, Estelle
Laure offers a riveting and complex story with magical elements about a family of
women contending with what appears to be an irreversible destiny, taking control and saying when enough is enough.

                                             Wednesday Books (July 14, 2020) 304 pages

My Review: 

When I first signed up to be on the blog tour for this book it was tagged as a mash up between The Lost Boys (one of my 80s movie favorites) and The Craft (another movie I enjoyed) although now the publisher's blurb is saying The Lost Boys and Wilder Girls (on my TBR list) and a feminist YA novel. Since I have not read Wilder Girls I can't comment on that, but definitely the setting is totally The Lost Boys with the California town of Santa Maria in the book modeled on Santa Clarita in the movie and of course Santa Cruz in real life. There are vampires--although we really manly hear mention of them, a few movie lines sprinkled in, and even the vampire-chasing characters The Frog Brothers--who look, dress and act the same as they do in the movie. They don't play a role in the story so I think it is just mainly a homage to the movie and if there are no copyright issues, I have no beef with them being there and like what they add to the setting. The book is set primarily in 1987, and I love the era and having spent a little time as a tween on vacation in Santa Cruz in the earlier 80s, the California beachy boardwalk setting is perfect for the book and its magic and darkness. 

There are a lot of potential triggers in the story from domestic abuse, drug use and abuse, sexual assault and crimes against women. The author addresses these triggers in her forward and said she wrote it so girls who feel powerless could imagine being invincible and a bit as a healing salve for her own past. The main character, Mayhem, and her mother Roxie return to Santa Maria from Texas after more than a decade of Roxie running away from the pain and life there after her love and Mayhem's father's tragic death. Mayhem knows little about her family, the only father and grandparents she knew were her stepfather, Lyle, and his family and they aren't good experiences. Lyle abused Roxy, and it isn't until he starts on Mayhem that the two flee back to the Brayburn family farm that Mayhem's aunt runs. There Mayhem meets the three foster children her aunt has taken in and is getting ready to adopt, and she begins to learn the family history from a journal started by her great-grandmother and added to over the years by other Brayburn women. The journal, the odd behaviors of the community toward her family (gift baskets at the front gate in tribute), the constant presence of crows, and other weird things begin to put the puzzle pieces in place for Mayhem to discover she comes of a line of very powerful women with supernatural powers. Mixed in with the family drama, there are missing teenage girls in Santa Maria and it is suspected they are the victims of a serial killer, that Mayhem and her new family try to identify. I don't want to go too much into the details of what happens, as if you are going to read this book, it's best to let the story unfold, which it does quickly, picking up pace and tension as it does. 

Overall, Mayhem was a good, dark, nostalgic escape. It's a fast read at just over 300 pages and I would have liked a bit more development for some of the characters and a less abrupt end. There are a couple parts of what happened that I am still unclear about--perhaps left purposefully vague. With the subject matter, I would say it would be better for older teens and young adults rather than younger. If like me you are a Lost Boys fan and love your 80s with a good dose of female empowerment thrown in, you should enjoy it.



-----

Author Notes: Estelle Laure, the author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back believes in love, magic, and the power of facing hard truths. She has a BA in Theatre Arts and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults,
and she lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her family. Her work is translated widely
around the world.

You can connect with Estelle on Twitter or Instagram.
 

----- 

Food Inspiration:

There was food to be found in Mayhem and it ran the gamut from convenience foods to healthy, natural foods. Mentions included Cheetos, granola, soft-boiled egg, soup, Twinkies, Hostess Cupcakes, cake iced with colored sugar, Nacho Cheese Doritos, Coke, donuts, bulgur wheat and nutritional yeast, coffee, frozen yogurt, little cakes with delicate flower icing, roast and potatoes, lettuce, oranges and baskets of fruit, chocolate-covered almonds, rock candies, vegetables, Rockets and Fudgescicles, hot cocoa, tacos, chimichurri sauce, green juices and fruit, green tomatoes, fresh peaches from the orchard, mint iced tea, plums, ice cream cones, rice and beans, with lime juice, a salad of avocado, lettuce, cucumbers, and pumpkin seeds, cheese plate, jelly beans, and tea.



For my bookish dish, I was going to make rice and beans and the salad with avocados, cucumbers and pumpkin seeds or a vegan version of the Barbacoa tacos mentioned in the book using jackfruit. Alas, I have had a small stomach thing this week and it wasn't interested in having any of those things inside it. Instead, I went to the the chapter in the book where Mayhem comes down to a table full of green juice and fruit and decided to make a green juice smoothie full of fruity goodness.


Smoothie recipes are pretty fluid--you can use what you have on hand or what fruit look like best. If you use frozen fruit and banana with cold juice you don't need ice cubes but if your fruit is fresh, ice cues will help thicken your smoothie.   
Fruity Green Juice Smoothie
By Deb, Kahakai Kitchen
(Makes 2 Servings)

1 banana, chopped and frozen
1/2 cup frozen peaches
1/2 cup frozen pineapple
1/2 cup frozen mango
1 cup apple juice (if you want less sweetness, use water or unsweetened almond milk)
juice of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 lime
1 Tbsp chia seeds, optional 
2 cups baby spinach or greens of choice
about 10 leaves fresh mint

Put ingredients into the container of a high-speed blender. Start blending on low speed and increase to high. Blend on high speed for 50-60 seconds until mixture is smooth.If smoothie is too thick, add additional juice or water until desired consistency. Pour into glasses and enjoy!


Notes/Results:  This smoothie is on the sweeter side which was perfect for what my stomach said it wanted or any recalcitrant children unwilling to eat their greens. I added the mint, chia seeds and pineapple juice to make it better for my digestion and it helped. I had one portion when I made it and saved the second for the next day. I will still make the tacos and salad at some point, but I will happily make and drink this again.


I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event that was held at Beth Fish Reads, but is now being hosted with Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. You can see this past week's post here.


Note: A review copy of "Mayhem" was provided to me by the publisher in return for a fair and honest review. I was not compensated for this review and as always my thoughts and opinions are my own. 

 

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Creamy Coconut Milk Curry Vegetable Stew for Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

Again, not the soup recipe I was planning on making but it was a long week and I wanted something relatively low effort this week and I had a hankering for coconut milk curry. It would have been even lower effort, and faster but I had a bag of dried chickpeas I wanted to use up so there was the extra step of soaking and cooking them before adding them to this Creamy Coconut Milk Curry Vegetable Stew.


I'm not going to bother with telling you how to soak and cook chickpeas but you can do them the day before or even freeze them and use in recipes like this. Or, if you decide to use canned, you'll still get a delicious stew.



Creamy Coconut Milk Curry Vegetable Stew
By Deb, Kahakai Kitchen
(Makes 6-8 Servings)

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 large carrot, diced
2 stalks celery,chopped
1 Tbsp minced ginger
3 cloves garlic, mnced
1 1/2 Tbsp curry powder of choice
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp Aleppo pepper chile powder of choice
1 tsp celery seed
6 cups vegetable broth (I used faux chicken broth)
3 cups chopped potato (I used sliced baby Yukon Golds)
4 cups cooked chickpeas (from dried or about 2 cans, drained)
1 cup frozen peas
2 cans or about 3 cups coconut milk (I used 1 can coconut milk & 1 can coconut cream)
lime juice, sea salt & black pepper to taste
fried onions and jasmine rice to serve

Heat the oil in a large heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium-high heat. Add onions, carrot and celery and cook about 10 minutes until veggies are softened and onions translucent. Add the ginger and garlic and cook for another two minutes, then stir in the spices and cook another minute, until spices are fragrant. Add the broth, potato, cooked chickpeas, and frozen peas and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer about 15 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Stir in the coconut milk and simmer another 5-10 minutes (do not boil!) until flavors have blended. Add lime juice, sea salt and black pepper to taste.

Serve ladeled in bowls with crispy fried onions on top and extra lime wedges. Serve with jasmine or basmati rice. Enjoy!


Notes/Results: As much as I rely on canned chickpeas, I am always happy when I take the time to cook my own from dried. They are plumber and better than the canned. This was a tasty stew that because of the lime and coconut milk doesn't feel like too much for the warm summer weather. you can improvise with whatever vegetables you have to use up and the chickpeas and potatoes make it satisfying--although you could certaining add chicken, shrimp or tofu if you like. It hit the spot for my yellow curry craving and I look forward to taking it for lunches this week. I would happily make it again.


Let's see who is here in the Souper Sundays kitchen this week:

Shaheen from Allotment2Kitchen shared this Lemon and Mint Runner Bean Pasta Salad, saying, "Like most of my pasta salads, not much to it. Its olive oil and lemon juice, minced mint from the garden, sliced runner beans that were parboiled in salted water and spring onions. Stirred into some cooked pasta, then seasoned with salt and pepper to taste and lunch was ready."


Tina of Squirrel Head Manor shared Avocado, Tomato and Red Onion Salad, saying, "I recently became acquainted with Lee Bailey's cookbook The Way I Cook. (thank you BFR)  Temperatures and humidity are ramping up here so a cool salad seemed the best choice for a refreshing side dish. ... This could go well with just about anything. Love it."


Thank you to Tina and Shaheen for joining me this week!

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:
  • Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
and 

On your entry post (on your blog):
  • Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
  • You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter
Have a happy, healthy week and take good care!
 

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Avgolemono (Egg & Lemon) Soup with Pearled Couscous for Soup (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

This is not the soup I intended to make today but life got in the way of soup making and I switched to a quicker recipe, this variation of Greek Avgolemono Soup from Mark Bittman. It made the most of local eggs and locally-grown lemons, dill and a carrot. 

I was most intrigued about using a blender to "froth" the egg, certainly a nontraditional take on this classic soup. My other changes based on what I had on hand are in red below. 


Avgolemono Soup
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman via Woman'sDay.com
Serves 4 

6 cups chicken stock (or non-chicken stock)
1 medium carrot, thinly-sliced
1 celery stalk, minced
1/2 cup orzo (I used pearled/Israeli couscous)
2 cups chopped chicken (I omitted & added a can of chickpeas, drained & rinsed)
2 large eggs
3 tbsp lemon juice, or to taste
(I added 1 1/2 tsp fresh dill)
salt and pepper

Bring 6 cups of broth to a near boil in a large soup pot, then turn down until it's just bubbling. Ass carrot and celery and cook about 10 minutes, until vegetables are getting tender. Add 1/2 cup orzo (or couscous or other small pasta shape) and cook until pasta is tender, another 8-10 minutes. Add 2 cups chopped cooked chicken if using, or chickpeas and add the dill. Season with salt and pepper.



Meanwhile, put eggs into blender and blend briefly. Add 3 tablespoons lemon juice and pulse again. Then, with the blender running, slowly add two cups of the soup (moslty broth) and blend until it is frothy and creamy looking. Pour it back in to the pot with the rest of the soup and heat for a couple of minutes without boiling. Taste and add additional salt, pepper and lemon juice as desired. Serve and enjoy. 


Notes/Results: A quick and simple soup that is comforting and light with lemony goodness. I'm not sure the looks were improved by using the blender to blend and froth the lemon-egg mixture but it was quick and easy to do and once the froth had settled in the bowl, it looked better (at least to me!). I liked the pearled couscous, although rice or any small pasta shape would work as well. The lemon flavor of the soup makes it light for the summer and warmer weather. I'd happily make it again. 


Linking up to I Heart Cooking Clubs where we are celebrating Farmers Market and Local Produce this week.

Let's see who is here in the Souper Sundays kitchen this week:

Shaheen of Allotment2Kitchen brought Broccoli and Ginger Soup this week saying, "I had planned to make a bookmarked Broccoli and Ginger Soup, but instead found myself adapting the last Broccoli Soup recipe that I shared on the blog.  ... Though it does not look that exciting,  i felt nourished. it felt healing to eat. I loved the ginger and it warmed my throat with its natural fire and the blended greens was goodness in a bowl." 



Judee of Gluten Free A-Z Blog brings a sweet and cooling Creamy Strawberry Soup saying, "I'm addicted to this light delicious chilled soup that I've been enjoying in this hot humid weather. I know there are many people who just can't wrap their finger around the idea of "chilled soup". I used to be one of them. I guess it's an acquired taste and concept. Call it a smoothie if you don't like the idea of "chilled soup."'



Tina of Squirrel Head Manor made the most of a Fettuccine with Summer Vegetables by adding protein and turning it into Summer Vegetables and Steak Soup. She says, "Well, all I did was saute onions and once soft, added the leftover vegetables. Snip the remaining fettuccine noodles into smaller pieces and toss in a pot. We had a few strips of steak we couldn't finish one evening a few weeks ago and those had been in the freezer, awaiting a casserole or soup concoction. I added a tiny bit of broth, a few other orphan veggies and more salt and pepper. That's it. Use up all the leftovers in any way you can. No waste :-)"


Thank you to Judee, Tina and Shaheen for joining me this week!

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:
  • Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
and 

On your entry post (on your blog):
  • Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
  • You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).
You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter
Have a happy, healthy week!