Spinach Soup

I very rarely cook with cookbooks these days (which doesn't mean I don't enjoy READING cookbooks, I do). I like to get in the kitchen and make a dish based on whatever food cravings I have or whatever I have on hand that looks like it needs cooking.

Today, that style of cooking resulted in a delicious pot of spinach soup.

I had about half a bag of prewashed organic spinach in the fridge, leftover from a couple of recent meals of sauted spinach and scrambled eggs (don't add cheese, or you will reduce the amount of iron you absorb from the spinach, or so I'm told).

I also had half an onion left over from something else and a potato or two. Plus some vegetable broth.

I chopped and sauted the onion, then threw it in a pot with the broth thinned with water, and the spinach. I microwaved half a potato and then threw it in the pot. Once the spinach had wilted, I dumped the whole works in the blender, blended it a bit (not too much, I wanted to be able to see bits of spinach) and then returned it to the pot.

I blended a big spoonful of flour with water, and added that to the soup in the pot. After it had heated through, I poured in a generous splash of half-and-half.

I've eated two bowls-full already. It's delicious--thick and creamy because of the blended potato and the flour, but fairly low in fat since I didn't use as much milk or cream as I usually do for a cream soup.

I bake bread the same way--without a recipe, using whatever flours and grains I have handy--the result is delicious bread, never quite the same twice. Which makes it tough when someone asks for a recipe!

What's your favorite cookbook? Extra points for vegetarian or Asian cookbooks, since that's the way I eat. Please post recommendations below in the comments section.

Also, do you USE this cookbook, or just read it? I think cookbooks make excellent bedtime reading.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Comments

[Dee]

I wish that I could cook! I mean, I suppose that I could if I put more effort into it. Mom would occasionally tell me and my sister that we needed to learn how to cook. Our reply? "No, thanks, mom, we're going to find husbands who can cook for us!" Well, my sister was fortunate in that regard, as my brother-in-law does cook. Not me. So, I plan to read comments to this post with interest - maybe I'll get motivated to learn how to cook!

[jeanne]

Well, there's cooking and then there's cooking. I like to cook, but I do things that are pretty simple.

And I haven't cooked dinner on a regular basis for years--not since my cancer diagnosis. So now when I cook it is a special occasion.

Also I cook during the day, like today, before I run out of energy. Cooking dinner at 6 or 7 p.m. is not appealing to me. But I just had another cup of the soup that I made for lunch today, and that was great.

Sundays are good days to cook. I'll make a big batch of soup, and a loaf of bread, and maybe something else, and then I can eat for most of the week on that.

For Older Son's birthday, we always do a big Japanese meal, and that takes a lot of work, both shopping and then preparing, but I have a friend whose mother is Japanese who helps me. So then it's fun. The cooking of the meal is often the best part of it.

[amy]

We love to cook and for Chinese, I like Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking. I am not vegetarian, so there may not be enough in there for you!

[jeanne]

This soup was so good that it was gone in a day. I ate it for lunch and dinner, and Younger Son (pickiest eater I know) ate a bowl with his dinner.

So today I'm making more, and this time I'm using green onions from my garden. These wintered over, as onions and garlic will do, at least in Seattle's mild climate.

The homegrown onion is deliciously pungent. Yum!

[Lisa]

As far as I am concerned cookbooks are really more like guidebooks. They give you a general idea of the type of ingredients you might want to use to make something that might resemble the original recipe. This theory leads to some delicious surprises, but also some disasters. My favorite cookbooks is actually a Williams Sonoma grilling cookbook since I haven't had a working kitchen for over 2 years, but my favorite vegie cookbook- is called Vegan World Fusion. Everything I have made from it is delicious.

Enjoy the fruits of your garden

[Vanda]

I love reading cook books. I never use them but I've made a promise to myself this year I'm going to use the few I have.

[jeanne]

OK, Lisa--I really want to know: What do you mean when you say you haven't had a working kitchen for over two years? I'm imagining all sorts of scenarios. And how DO you cook? Or do you live on takeout?

[Lisa]

MY kitchen tales are not so interesting, but essentially- the electric lighter thing on my range gave up two years ago and I had to use a flame thrower to light the burners, then my microwave gave up followed shortly by my oven, plus several of hte cabinetsw fell apart. I became very accomplished at cooking everything from pizza to vegies to chicken on my barbque. But now my new kitchen is almost done. Henceforth, I haven't had afully functional kithcen in two years, but I disdain take out so I have done the best I could.

[jeanne]

Lisa--that's a really funny story, although probably not so fun to live through.

I'm really slow to get things repaired: Our dishwasher didn't work for a year before I finally got it fixed. It might have been even longer. .. But I had boys to wash the dishes. They were quick to point out to me that I got it fixed after they were both not at home full time.