Friday, September 11, 2009

Great vegetable service and even better soup!



I'm in love with Organics 2 You! I've probably told most of you all about it (haha...by that I mean my mom, since I'm pretty sure that mom is the only one who reads my blog!) by now. If I haven't, here is the scoop: every week (or at intervals that you want), they deliver a bin of produce to my door. These produce are all organic (and, for me, all veggies because it's what I wanted), and most are farm fresh and local. And the best part is that financially it makes sense! I'm afraid to tell them for fear that they'll change it...but they provide a really good value!

I did this for a few reasons: 1) to increase the amount of organic foods in our diet to help Sky's ADD and our general health; 2) to try new vegetables by just getting the box, seeing what it contains, and learning how to cook it; 3) because I'm lazy. Well, not lazy, per se, but I'd prefer to avoid the grocery store if at all possible.

So today my bin of vegetables contained italian kale. I've never actually made kale, though I've seen it used on the Food Network a lot. Woo hoo! The bin also contained a recipe for soup, which looks intriguing but wasn't totally my cup of soup. So with that recipe and another that someone online shared, I had some ideas and set out to make my own Kale-Bacon soup.

Here goes:

Kale-Bacon soup

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
5 garlic cloves, sliced
6 potatoes, roughly chopped
1 quart water
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups white wine
3 bay leaves
1 Tbsp. italian seasoning
salt & pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups bacon (some fat removed)
1 bunch kale, chopped


In soup pot, saute onions and garlic in olive oil for 5 minutes at medium heat- do not burn garlic!

Add potatoes and saute for 5 minutes more.

Add water, chicken broth, wine, bay leaves, italian seasoning, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Bring to low boil, cover and simmer 20 minutes.

In skillet, fry bacon until browned over medium high heat. Do not burn! Reduce heat to medium. Add kale, salt and pepper to skillet. Turn kale in skillet, allowing it to become tender and a more vibrant green, 5-8 minutes.

Add bacon and kale to potato mixture, let simmer 20 more minutes.

Enjoy!

4 comments:

Rich said...

Glad to see you are enjoying vegetables. Much healthier than fast food.

JULIE said...

I finally read your blog Brianna, somehow the original link was deleted, so it's nice to know everything is better at the
Bigham house. Hope your owie is better.

~Gretchen~ said...

oooh, i like the modifications on the soup. i'll have to remember those.

for some reason, i never realized you had a blog. i'll have to keep up and pay more attention

*Brianna* said...

Gretchen, I used to have the link in my siggy but deleted it when I stopped blogging for awhile. Then I figured I'd wait until I actually had something to say before I posted the link again.

:-)