Soup, week four and five: carrot, quinoa and curried lentil. (And brilliant cornbread.)

We were out of town last weekend.  We ate a lot of delicious food, but we did not make or eat any soup.  So today to make up for it, we made a total mess of the kitchen... and two beautiful soups in the process.

One was a carrot soup I saw a few weeks ago and had been dying to try.  Smitten Kitchen, carrots, tahini, crisped chickpeas... there could not possibly be anything wrong with any of that.  Right?

there wasn't... not one single thing

The soup was like butter... like healthy, vitamin-C-filled, delicious butter you would eat with a spoon... and then go back for seconds... and possibly thirds if you didn't have another amazing soup in front of you.  The crisped chickpeas were a nice touch, and they are officially going to become a staple around here (on salads, in soups, in my hand about to be popped into my mouth, that sort of thing).

The other was a lentil and quinoa soup recipe I found at our lovely hostess's house last weekend. She's big on backpacking with tasty food, and we like to camp and hike with tasty food, so I perused her cookbook collection just looking for easy, me-friendly energy bars and that sort of thing.

I quickly realized I needed to own this cookbook at some point.  It features lots of gluten-free recipes and some really interesting soup ideas - many of which call for a bunch of dehydration and re-hydration (this is a backpacker cookbook, after all) but which also look like they would be just as wonderful without all that nonsense.  This was one of those recipes so I scribbled it down on the back of an envelope and recreated it tonight.

OK, he recreated it tonight.  Whatever.

mine = sans yogurt because of the quinoa
*SIGH*

Spicy and hearty and wholesome and amazing.

We both agreed that these two soups are our favorites so far, this quarter and also out of any other soups we have made this winter.  And we have made some wonderful soups.  Especially after two days this week of leftover aforementioned pumpkin corn soup that had been frozen and defrosted and reheated and still wowed me, all I can say is... that's saying a lot.

To round out the kitchen-mess-extravaganza I also made these amazing black quinoa corn muffins.  (Only I used regular quinoa because that's what we had.)  And OH. MY. they are good. 

I am never eating again