Wednesday, February 24

Recipe: Sunburst Carrot Soup with Fresh Ginger, Orange, and Carrot Juice


Could you use a flavorful bowl of healthy winter sunshine? (recipe here)

One of the highlights of our winter is the arrival each January of the bulk citrus we order through the friend of a friend. Citrus season is at its peak so the fruit is sweet and juicy, and we've found that eating an orange (or two!) a day is a great way to load up on Vitamin C when it seems like half the people you talk to are sick.

Most of the two cases of organic oranges were eaten straight out of hand, though I did manage to stash a couple of orange yogurt loaf cakes in the freezer. I still have plenty of lemons (partly because my hunky farmguy is still waiting for me to make him some really lemony lemon bars), but we're down to just three little oranges left, and they're earmarked for a batch of Sunburst Carrot Soup with Fresh Ginger, Orange, and Carrot Juice.

This cheerful, low fat soup is packed with carrots and bursting with antioxidants and flavor. It's a big dose of happy for both the body and the mind and it even freezes beautifully. The flavor and color from the fresh carrot juice stirred in at the end add a wonderful brightness, but the soup tastes great even without it.

Adapt my easy recipe to suit your taste: try more fresh ginger, more orange zest, maybe extra garlic—or leave any of them out. A little ground cumin is a very nice addition. However you serve it up, cold and flu season won't stand a chance.

Hungry for something more than soup? You'll find links to all my sweet and savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.

© FarmgirlFare.com, where our seven donkeys don't get all the organic carrots, just most some of them.

Tuesday, February 2

Recipe: Easy Spinach Soup Made with Fresh Spinach (and Rave Reviews)


This tasty, healthy, dairy-free, gluten-free, low fat soup is packed with fresh spinach and cooks up in about 40 minutes (recipe here).

Have you ever grown spinach? It's one of my favorite greens, and there's nothing that compares to freshly picked spinach from the garden. But over the past 20 years of gardening in Missouri I've had much better luck growing Swiss chard, lettuce, kale, and Asian greens, so I tend to focus more on them instead.

I was recently inspired, though, by Margaret Roach's spinach-growing Q&A with Tom Stearns, the founder of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont, which was full of interesting information and helpful tips. (I love Margaret's wonderful website, A Way To Garden.)

More about growing spinach plus rave reviews for this recipe below. . .