Good morning folks!

Before we get the party started I wanted to thank everyone for their kind words and condolences last week after the “former missus” passed away. You helped me immensely. I honestly think that I was able to relay some of the love and support you all provided and was able to trickle that down to my daughters.

Quick update: the girls are doing well. It’s going to be madness settling up the estate since the former mrs right never completed a will and had just taken out a 2nd – a reverse mortgage –  and in order to settle anything with the house somebody would need to give the lenders about $150,000 just to start the settlement. 

The house is in a “trending upwards” part of San Diego and should have value eventually but considering she was a packrat and a 2 pack a day smoker – yes even after going through chemo and being stage 4 – it may need to be razed down to the slab before any value is found.

Any of our lawyers out there familiar with probate?

Anyway, I am completely removed from the entire estate thing and the daughters and son-in-law are sorting it all out.

It’s taken me a few days but I’m finally mentally ready to get back on the Sunday Gravy Train now.

 

Let’s do this shit!

 

Here’s the 4th and final installment of my vegetarian soup cavalcade of vegan deliciousness!

I have held true to my promise of staying vegetarian Monday through Friday and I’ve been able to do it by using a “Four Soup Rotation” that includes our vegetarian beef and barley soup, which I am currently enjoying for my weeknight dinners this week. I am also rotating in the vegan lentil soup, so fucking good. Soup three isn’t technically soup but it remains vegetarian and that would be our  pasta e fagoili, and I will be making that this weekend for next weeks work night dinners.

This is the 4th soup in the rotation and it may very well be my favorite.

We are making a Sunday Gravy original. Swear to god, man I made this fucker up myself!

Southwest Style Vegetable soup!

You will require the following:

1 fire roasted, peeled and chopped red bell pepper

1 fire roasted, peeled and chopped poblano or pasilla pepper

3 stalks of celery chopped

2-3 carrots chopped

1 onion chopped

3-5 cloves of garlic minced

1 potato peeled and cubed

1 package of fresh mushrooms gently rinsed

1 tablespoon of tomato paste

2 cans of black beans – whole, drained and rinsed.

2 cans of corn

1 32 oz carton of vegetable stock

1 15 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes

1/2 tablespoon of cumin

1/2 tablespoon of chili powder

1/2 tablespoon of fresh rosemary

1/2 tablespoon of fresh thyme

1 tablespoon of salt

Bunch of grinds of black pepper

2-3 cups of fresh baby spinach chopped into ribbons.

Despite the rather lengthy list of ingredients this soup is very easy to make.

 

We’ll start by roasting the red bell pepper and the poblano.

Two different techniques for you today.

The first and quickest method is to burn that bastard up on a live gas flame right on your stovetop.

Cook until charred and blistered. See those tongs. You will need them very much here.

Same with the poblano. Get that shit good and blistered.

Alternatively you can baste with olive oil and cook in the oven which we’ve done many times before. Those are cooked in a 375 oven for 20 minutes, turned over and roasted for 15-20 minutes more.

However you roast them, when they are charred and blistered place them in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap to steam them. 

If you have a paper bag that will work too. Let the peppers steam for 10 minutes or so. After steaming take them out and they will be a whole hell of a lot easier to peel.

Then give them a rough chop.

Since we’re chopping shit, get after that mire poix. You don’t want to dice the vegetables too chunky since we won’t need to cook the soup for a terribly long cook time.

Feel free to use any brand of whole black beans you want with the exception of those “Goya” motherfuckers. Fuck them directly in their …

 

Here are the store bought ingredients including our San Marzano tomatoes which I have been happy to have procured for several weeks in a row now.

Any self respecting soup – as all of our featured soups will show –  starts with the sauteing of the mire poix. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into a Dutch oven or soup pot and over a medium heat cook down the veggies until translucent.

Seven minutes or so later stir in the roasted pasilla, the diced red bell pepper and the tomato paste and garlic. Cook just until the tomato paste is incorporated, the veggies get coated with tomato paste and the garlic is aromatic.

Then in go the vegetable stock and the tomatoes. If you bought whole San Marzano tomatoes simply squish each one by hand directly into the soup pot.

Give a good stir then add in the herbs, spices, salt and pepper.

The soup will simmer here for 30 minutes. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover with a lid and stir occasionally.

While the base of the soup is simmering, go ahead and peel, cube and rinse the potatoes. I do this in advance and soak the potatoes in cold water so they don’t turn that ugly-ass brown/beige color.

Set aside for now.

After the soup base has simmered for 30 minutes it’s time to start adding in the canned shit.

First the corn. You can drain the corn but I dumped it in juices and all.

Then the rinsed and drained beans jump in the pool. The beans will need a rinse to get rid of the starchy water they soak in while canned.

I did mention that these are not those shitty fucking Goya black beans, right?

Good.

Bring the soup back to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 30 additional minutes.

Next to the soup party we add in the potatoes and the mushrooms.

Yeah that’s a full-ass soup pot but it’s for a weeks worth of dinners, remember?

Cook just until the mushrooms are done and the potatoes just start to get tender.

Then turn off the heat.

Final step?

You guessed right!

Add in the spinach.

Let the spinach wilt and incorporate and we’ve got a big ass pot of soup that will feed us for all of next week. The soup is going to need time to cool here. A good hour at least.

Yes indeed!

I’ve got this enormous plastic container that will actually hold this entire batch of soup in the refrigerator.

It might be a good idea to buy a kitchen scale, especially if I keep doing this long term. The tricky part is taking in the same amount of soup each day. I’ve had Fridays where I’ve got a big fucking container of soup and I’ve had other Fridays where – hoo boy could I use some more goddamn soup right now but I’m getting better with my distribution each week.

This soup right here?

It’s fucking magical. It’s got a slight low simmer of heat from the roasted pepper and chili powder and it’s got that Southwest thing from the black beans and corn. Each vegetable plays a role in the final soup flavor. This soup can be easily adapted to add in a whole fucking garden of vegetables if you so choose.

You can also add to the Southwest-iness by adding in cilantro and maybe a squeeze of lime but I don’t need that particularly.

The soup eats rich yet delivers surprisingly clean to the palate, The beans, potato and mushrooms ensure you won’t be missing a meat element at all.

You could very easily add in some roast chicken to this soup and it would be insanely delicious but it really doesn’t need it you know.

As with every one of our recent soups this just gets better and better each day that passes.

This soup actually makes me happy when I’m eating it. Each day at work I make these animal sounds – don’t worry I’m the only one in the building at dinner time – and I say out loud “This soup is so FUCKING GOOD!”

The body also thanks me profusely and it will indeed reward you with very happy digestive experiences for the entire week.

If I was an old timey snake oil salesman I could get rich on this shit.

It. Is. PERFECT!

And once again, it’s my very own recipe! 

Finally a quick story time: My second in command at work is a truly good guy and tries to look out for me. Since I start my day at 10:30 AM each day there will be times that I miss meetings and all-hands gatherings – hey? Maybe that’s on purpose!

Anyway there was a recent meeting since I’ve got a new customer contact at work who is also a very decent human being and an excellent choice for his role. At this meeting they served breakfast. I already told you what my vegan breakfast diet is like. Trying to be thoughtful my 2nd in charge says “I saved you some breakfast. There’s a (breakfast) burrito, some fruit, a Danish and some orange juice in the fridge.”

Indeed a nice gesture but he also knows I’m on my current vegetarian kick and it was a sausage, egg and cheese breakfast burrito. Dude! I made great use of the orange juice and mixed fresh fruit bowl though.

Let’s talk about that Danish.

Remember last week when we got in the “read the nutritional label thing” and I showed the example of the hummus as having a perfect ingredient list?

Let’s just take a quick peek at this here motherfucker.

Oh please please read that fucking thing.

Jesus Christ it’s like a warning sign at a superfund site!

And it was for this!!!

When I was a kid our Raisin Snails had only raisins and snails in them!

And we liked it!

Next time you’re at a continental breakfast and think “Oh look! A Danish! That shouldn’t hurt anything!”

Do yourself a damn favor and read the labels.

/climbs down off high horse

There you go!

Four vegetarian soups to add to your rotation if you want to consider it. I love them all but this fucker is special!

Guess what?

We ain’t vegetarian next week!

Just sayin’!

Thanks for reading everyone and once again thanks to all of you for your kind words and support last week in what was a seriously fucked up weekend. You really, truly helped and I just think y’all are the cats pajamas.

Let’s do this again next week shall we?

PEACE!