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Making stuff out of scraps

Today is a bulk cooking day - we're a few weeks away from the start of new school years and semesters, which means it's time to start rebuilding our usual routines.  This involves setting back the alarm clock (which I hate already), getting our morning walk on, and, perhaps most importantly, picking up the batch cooking in earnest once more.

One day of each weekend, our kitchen becomes an epic, delicious mess.  We take a couple of hours and do as much pre-preparing as we can stand.  This is a really crucial part of our ability to prepare healthy meals from minimally processed stuff during the week.  So today was the day to make rice ahead, pressure cook beans, whip up some hummus, make ice cream (a house staple!), and more.  It's a quiet weekend without too many other commitments, so it's also a good week to get our pasta and pizza dough on.  (Both freeze really well.)

A few weeks ago, we bought carrots at the co-op that had really substantial greens attached.  They were gorgeous - a lovely bright green - and I was determined that they weren't going to waste. I hate just sticking things in the compost if I can use them, but we were pressed for time that week.  So I stuck them in a bag in the freezer to use later, giving myself time to apply a little Google and see if I could come up with a use for them.

Most of the searching determined that they make good pesto, but I have an excellent pesto recipe already.  Eventually, I located this carrot top soup recipe and flagged it for use later.

And then, this week, we got purslane in our CSA box. It's another green, one commonly foraged, that can be added to soups and stir-fries.  It's also a whole new ingredient in our house, and I admit that I opened the box and thought to myself, "wow!  That looks lovely!  I have no idea what to do with it!"

But the description of it - add to soup! - got me thinking back to those frozen carrot greens, and I decided to get crafty.  The result is six cups of lovely Very Green Soup that smells a bit like a broccoli soup, with a smooth and mild flavor.

Ingredients:

1 bunch of carrot greens
1 bunch purslane
1 quart veggie stock
3-4 medium potatoes
1 onion
salt
pepper
1 cup cream

The process:

Peel and chop your potatoes and chop the onion.

Combine onion, potatoes, stock, and greens in a large stockpot.  Bring to a boil and then reduce heat: simmer for about 20 minutes.

Using an immersion blender, blend the greens, stock, onion, and potatoes until they reach your desired soup-like consistency.  We opted for a very smooth soup.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Stir in 1 cup cream.

Pro Tips:

I think you could pretty much use whatever weird greens you've got around on this one, and I'll be trying it again with some other cooking greens as they become available!

The cream really makes this one.  It would be possible to leave it out if you happen to be vegan, but in our view it really enhanced the flavor.  We also added just a hint of lemon-infused olive oil.  Yum.

It needed what felt to us like a lot of salt, so be generous on that front.  That could also be because our stock is incredibly low-sodium; we used our homemade stock.  So, take some tastes along the way and use your good judgment.






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