Photo: adactio/Flickr

Susan McCrory
Research by Abby Conway

With President’s Day weekend at our doorstep, we thought the theme of SOUP would be a fitting start to the long weekend. You’ve got more time to cook, it’s cold out there and gang-busters soup with a chunk of hearty bread tops the list of Great Winter Comfort Food! Here are a few ideas:

Winter Soup (with celeriac and chick peas) from Wicked Tasty Harvest. Check out that gnarly parsnip!

Sweet Potato and Sausage Soup from We Are Not Martha.

Nearly drowning in the white stuff, a majorly snowed-in cook in the D.C. area sought refuge in a soup she created off the cuff and now forgets. But she says it’s a lot like the Moroccan Lentil and Spinach Soup from The Creative Pot.

Erin Cooks had a go at this flavor-full Roasted Butternut Squash Soup and Curry Condiments (and check out those Valentine’s Day molasses cookies!)  

Cooking 4 the Week offers up a Black Bean Soup with Savory Cream with a short list of more soups to try and a recent post on no-knead bread. ‘Not sure about you, but the prospect of kneading dough makes me freeze up! This looks goooood.

Finally, did you catch the news of the “Let’s Move” initiative being spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama? With the full backing of the White House, she’s kicking off a national movement promoting more play (read: exercise) and healthier eating (read: less sugar and fat) in our nation’s children in an effort to combat and eventually eliminate childhood obesity.

We can all draw from that, no?

Eat soup, play lots, and have a great President’s Day weekend, everyone!

Photo: Rosenkaal/Wikimedia

 Abby Conway  (newly on board at PRK)

Falling in love with…
“I don’t care who you are and how much you think you don’t like brussels sprouts; if you tried these, you would fall in love.” By the looks of it, Sues from We Are Not Martha is right. Her recipe for brussel sprouts  with bacon, ponzu (a citrus flavored sauce), fried garlic and bonito flakes, which she got from Chef Lee over at FoodBuzz, looks like it could get even the pickiest eaters asking for more (although, as she points out, the bacon probably helps). Sues notes that you can alter the recipe anyway you’d like, depending on whether or not you can find all the ingredients. Either way, it looks worth a try. 

Homemade what?
If you like your fair share of homemade sweets (I do), you probably go through a lot of vanilla extract. Nayiri of 10thirty.blogspot.com ran into the same problem and decided to take a whack at making it herself . “Seriously, it seems utterly ridiculous to write a “recipe” for it…” She’s right, but we’re grateful. In just one simple step, no more, no less, you’ve got homemade vanilla extract. The hardest part just may be the waiting: it takes about 2 weeks before you can use it. Yep, patience is a virtue. 

Get Organized
Sick of getting home from the grocery store to find that you still had last week’s lettuce in the crisper AND you forgot to get orange juice? Tina at Trading Up Downtown has the supermarket game plan for you. She posted a seven step guide  to help you save time and money. Any shopper, from the super-organized to the budget conscious, can find great tips on how to minimize double purchases and never forget another item at the store.