New soups

And we thought I got away from soups.

Let me tell you, that hasn't happened. I have two new recipes, mostly because of situational things. I made one soup just because I wanted to -- because I wanted to have an emergency 'I left with no real idea of what I'm eating after a while' kind of back up food. I do leave for the weekend here and there, and it's cheaper to make a soup than it is to get a burger.
On top of that, I had been given two HUGE heads of collards. I mean, HUGE. I think they were about 3-5 pounds each, and I had no idea how to eat them before they went bad. So, I cooked them. I mean, what else do you do? And that involved a lot of water and space. I think my new soup pot is 16 quarts, or some crazy thing like that. The collards didn't fit by about 4 inches over the top, after I'd broken the leaves down and whatnot. It was a lot, and I ended up freezing it all.
And then I had no freezer space AND I had just gotten married, which meant I froze some of my cake to save for my 1st year anniversary. Talk about no space! So, I made soup. It was logical, I guess, but who makes soup out of collard juice?


Then a friend of mine tells me she's sick. My response? Make soup. Make spicy soup, no less, which is obviously a good idea for sick people. She felt back to her normal self by the time she got the soup, mostly -- she said it gave her a pick-me-up kind of thing. Not surprising, since it was full of a ton of fresh veggies.

So, I posted the soup ingredients online. My soups, when I do them, aren't hard to do. I don't typically brown this, saute that, pre-cook things, etc, before putting it in the full soup. I might, given I'm really worried about extracting flavors like carmelized onions or something (the most I did was presoak the shiitakes I had in the sick-woman soup, because they're dried and in a container I got from Costco a while back. I only used them in the soup because I don't want to let those go bad, even though dried food takes a while to turn -- they will, eventually).
I posted them online to get names. I haven't chosen for the first, but the second is Melly's Sweet'n'Spicy Soup, which makes a lot of product, isn't terribly bad for you (no added salt, no sugar, but plenty of carbs; it's balanced by how many nutrients it involves from all the v8 juice, tomatoes, tubers, spice, etc). The idea was to get some energy back into her, and it worked.


Funny thing is, a friend requested soup for the Sunday night games which still go on this semester. I think they shall continue until someone graduates and moves away, and even then, unless it's Kevin and I moving away, they'll probably still keep going. Kyle says he wants potatoes and bacon. MOAR POTATOES. So many potatoes!

I shall post what I did and the ingredients I used when I can. I should shower first, because the skinny one and his visiting brother decided they want to go out, and I'm probably tagging along. I'll post by tomorrow night, given things go as I like. I have a few bread recipes I yoinked, which seem to go well with EVERYTHING I put them toward.