Dice it, Broth it, Soup it! {Sam}

Ok… yeah… the title is a little lame, but I’ve got 2get creative because we still have so many more to go!  It does make sense though, I’ve got two soups for you: ‘Day After Thanksgiving Turkey Soup’ which I made last week, and ‘Albondigas Soup’ which I made yesterday.  Both of which are quite broth-y soups with lots of diced vegetable action!  (Remember, if you want to make some of these soup recipes, the cookbook is 300 Sensational Soups).

The ‘Day After Thanksgiving Turkey Soup’ – quite a mouthful of a title, and to eat, come to think of it ;) – is a great basic soup!  Broth, fortified with onions, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, spices and turkey bones for a while.  Plus, lots of leftover chopped turkey and frozen peas!  Garnish with some fresh parsley and voila!  A good-for-you, easy, hearty basic soup!  I would definitely make this again – a good substitute for chicken noodle in my opinion!

This recipe made a lot of soup!!  Both hubby and I had it for dinner, he had seconds.  We both ate it for lunch the next day, and dinner the day after that and then I froze the rest into 4 additional meals for both of us!

Onto Albondigas!  In parentheses the cookbook says ‘Mexican Meatball Soup.’  It features mini meatballs that have fresh chopped mint in them.  They are delicious!  I would highly recommend them.  However, I do have some qualms with this recipe overall.  It’s a little bland.  I liked that it was light and broth-y, but it didn’t have much flavor.  I probably could have made it better with better broth (I bought what was on sale – oops, lesson learned for next time).  But I thought the jalapenos, carrots, onion, tomatoes and oregano would have added more flavor.  It does have cabbage in it too, by the way, which was yummy, but I didn’t expect it to add much to the flavor.  Cilantro and a little vinegar at the end made it a little better, but I still ended up adding more salt, pepper, and some Tabasco to get it up to more of an enjoyable level.  If I had time for more research on other recipes on this soup I might have been able to make it even better, but I didn’t… so it was what it was.

And I hope I’m not making it sound terrible… because it wasn’t, both hubby and I were satisfied with dinner, especially the meatballs (which btw, were half venison half beef), but if I were to make it again I might look for a recipe outside this cookbook and make modifications from there.

While the soup wasn’t all I had hoped it would be, the wine certainly made my night a little better!  ;)

Still looking forward to more soups, but I’m thinking I might do a stock recipe next after my experience with the chicken stock I used for Albondigas!

Happy Soup-ing!

Sam