Creamy Kale Lentil Soup with Pickled Fennel

Creamy Kale Lentil Soup with Pickled Fennel
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Happy New Year! This is my first post of 2024 and naturally, it is a vegetable-heavy soup with a plant-based protein. I’m aware of how predictable this recipe is. Just call me “basic” and be done with it. But despite all evidence to the contrary, this Creamy Kale Lentil Soup is not part of a larger scheme to eat healthier. While it’s true this vibrant green pick-me-up delivers an entire head of kale and an entire bulb of fennel in a velvety smooth slurp-able format, it is also true that I made it because I was craving it.

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Miso Clam Chowder

Miso Clam Chowder
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Today’s recipe is a little riff on a family favorite. I, like most people who grew up on the East Coast of Canada, grew up eating fish and seafood chowder. My grandmother always made a huge pot whenever and wherever the entire family congregated. Naturally, the chowder was always accompanied by a fresh batch of tea biscuits. I often say that this combo would be my preferred last meal. It is perfect, so why mess with it? Well, because I can’t help it. It’s not in my nature to leave well enough alone. Today’s Miso Clam Chowder is not an improvement of a childhood favorite because you can’t improve upon perfection. This is not an attempt to elevate, this is playtime. Delicious playtime, I might add.

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Confit Tomato Soup

Confit Tomato Soup
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It’s hard to get excited about a tomato in the dead of winter. Actual tomato season is still months away and most of what you find in grocery stores right now are light in flavor and mealy in texture. Not exactly the stuff of tomato dreams. But while it may not be the ideal time for something like my heirloom tomato pizza, it is prime time for this Confit Tomato Soup. When you lazily cook anything in a vat of olive oil it’s going to be good. The confit process concentrates the flavor of the tomatoes and brings out their sweetness while reducing their acidity. In other words, the confit method transforms lackluster winter tomatoes into flavor powerhouses.

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Smoked Tofu Chili with Crushed Corn Chips

Smoked Tofu Chili
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There’s been a lot of talk about belt-tightening lately. And it’s not hard to see why. I paid $8 for a pound of butter the other day. And I have very fond memories of paying $6 for the same amount not that long ago. Consequently, I have been more financially conservative at the grocery store. A necessity I hate and resent. And all of these limitations have me reminiscing about my university days, particularly the struggle meals that sustained me. Today’s Smoked Tofu Chili is a descendant of one such meal. I guarantee whatever concoction I was eating ten years ago was not as good as this. But the bones were there and the comfort it gives me is the same, so let’s make it.

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