Cheerful Winter Soup: Tom Yum!

I made a delicious Thai recipe from EatingWell in Season: The Farmers' Market Cookbook tonight: Tom Yum Soup. I'd never had it in a restaurant, but it looked tasty: shrimp, pineapples, red peppers, and tomatoes ... (I omitted the mushrooms). I went to a big healthy food store to get lemongrass and lime leaves, and I'm glad I made the effort.

It's in the winter section of the Farmers' Market cookbook, but none of the ingredients are in season around here ... still, it is a nice cheerful winter soup.

Next time, I'd add more ginger (in addition to the dried galangal) and also some red pepper paste.

Aromatics creating the broth: jalapeños, galangal, lemongrass, and lime leaves

Stirring the soup

Eating the soup (I added rice noodles)

Delicious!

Mama Leah's Chicken Soup

"When a man eats a chicken, one of them is sick," says Tevye in _Fiddler on the Roof_.

We recently had the need AND a stewing hen for soup, thanks to a cold and a stewing hen from Little Tree Farm.

Our favorite chicken soup recipe is from Mama Leah's Jewish Kitchen, by Leah Loeb Fischer and Maria Polushkin Robbins (c1990).

The best part of making the soup was that the stewing hen came with feet!

Chicken feet!	Chicken feet in the soup ...
The second best part was eating the soup! Tasty soup!

Christmas Soup

This recipe for Pasta e Fagioli (Pasta and Bean Soup) from ChefMD looks like Christmas! The look is entirely coincidental, but I'm glad for a holiday-looking soup all the same. 

Yesterday, I listened to a People's Pharmacy® interview with ChefMD, aka Dr. John La Puma called Healthy Holiday Feasts. I'd heard them talk to him before, but this time I was inspired to check out the recipes on ChefMD.com. Many look quite tasty!

Substitutions
This recipe calls for fennel, which wasn't available at the store yesterday, so I substituted an onion instead. I used Bionaturae's whole wheat macaroni, as that was the smallest pasta I had. On the show, Dr. La Puma talked about using "reduced sodium spicy vegetable juice" which I also didn't have; I used a double can of fire-roasted tomatoes with their juice. I also didn't have peas, so I used string beans.

Tomatoes + string beans + navy beans = Christmas soup!

Musical Accompaniment
Pink Martini's Joy to The World.