Soup-er winter!

I have been a naughty, naughter little blogger.. I haven't posted anything all winter!

I have been cooking plenty though. And this winter I rediscovered soup.

Sounds like a no brainer I know, but surprisingly I've not made a lot of soups before. But over winter I was craving hot lunches, and knowing chips and burgers were a bad idea it occured to me that depending on the soup and how it's made it can be a very low-calorie, vegie-filled meal. So I got to work experimenting with different soups. Here are the five I made this winter.

Pumpkin Soup

Again this seems like a no brainer - but I've only ever eating pumpkin soup my mum made. I used this recipe as a starting point, but made mine a little differently. I used nearly 2kgs of butternut pumpkin, two potatos, added two carrots, and left out the leek and the cream. Because I prefer to stir in sour cream at the end.

Results were oh so yummy. I've made this three more times since!

Pea And Ham Soup

Having had success with the pumpkin soup I decided to give another classic a try. Again I started with a recipe but did it a little differently. I used only one onion, and after sauteeing it in a frypan I put all the ingredients in my slow cooker for the day.

Results - not impressed. I'm told by others that tried it that it was lovely, so apparently I'm just not a fan of pea and ham soup.

Harira

I had friends coming over for dinner, and Little Princess had been playing with my cookbooks again, so my Morroccan cookbook (which these friends had given me for my birthday) was lying on the floor. I decided it was fate and had a flick through for something to cook. This lamb and chickpea soup caught my eye. This time I followed the instructions exactly.

Results were fantastic! This was a really thick, chunky soup, almost more like a stew. The lamb was so tender, the chickpeas were cooked through, and there was so much flavour. Totally worth the $15 the lamb cost me.

Carrot and ginger soup

I tried this twice, both using the same recipe. First time I left out the water, only using 1 litre of chicken stock, It was lovely and thick, but I didn't get much soup, I filled two bowls and had almost none left. The next time I put in the water, but ended up with a much more liquidy soup which didn't fill my tummy at all.

Overall very pleased with the taste. But definitely not a meal to eat after a hard workout at the gym. If left me quite hungry.

Sweet potato and chicken soup

Once again the recipe came from Taste. This was an attempt to make hubby and I feel better while suffering from a terrible flu. I used a brown onion instead of a spanish one, which I sauteed before adding the other ingredients. And the soy milk was swapped for sour cream.

Unfortunately I have no idea how it tasted. Once done cooking I discovered I had no sense of taste because of the flu. It had a nice texture, but that's all I can really say about it.