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Friday, January 25, 2008

Thrifty Recipe Swap

Over at my friend Gayle's blog, she is having a thrifty recipe swap. Isn't that a FANTASTIC idea! We all get bored with the same ol' recipes. It's nice to find some budget friendly variety!

For 15 years I was a vegetarian, and let me tell you, it's a whole lot cheaper! While my family occasionally eats meat now, we still eat vegetarian 4 - 5 nights a week. Here is one of our family favorites. It's on the super frugal side, it's healthy, and SO delicious. Oh, and the best part, ALL of my kids love it, and none of us like peas. It's THAT good!

Fresh Green Pea Soup and Cottage Cheese Dill Bread

Fresh Green Pea Soup
1 Tbs butter
1 c minced onion
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c veggie broth, chicken broth, or water
4 C fresh or frozen peas
1 c milk (low fat is fine)
black pepper to taste

Up to 3 Tbs fresh or 1 Tbs dried:
Basil, dill, tarragon, parsley, chives
(this is your choice. I have found dill to be the best, and I often add chives and tarragon too. Fresh herbs are the best in the summer when my herb garden is growing. This time of year I make it with dried herbs and again, I think the dill should be the prominent herb)

Melt butter in a soup pot. Add onion and salt and cook on medium until the onion is soft (8 - 10 min).

Add the water and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover, and simmer about 10 min. Add the peas, cover and remove from heat. Let stand for 5 min (or until the peas are tender)

Puree the soup with the milk in a food processer or blender, then return to the pot.

Heat soup gently. Add your own personal selection on minced fresh, or dried herbs.

*This soup is also great served cold on a warm summer day!


Cottage Cheese Dill Bread
I always serve this bread with the soup. It's great by itself, or with cream cheese and thin slices of cucumbers.

A little butter or oil for the pan
2 c white flour (I often use spelt flour with wonderful results)
2 t baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 c cottage cheese
2 eggs
6 Tbs milk
1/4 c honey or sugar
4 Tbs melted butter
3 Tbs fresh dill, or 1 Tbs dried

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease medium-size loaf pan.

Sift together (honestly, I usually don't sift to save time) flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Make a well in the center.

Combine cottage cheese, eggs, milk, honey, and melted butter in a separate bowl. Mix well. Add to the dry ingredients along with the dill, and mix just enough to blend. The batter is fairly stiff.

Spread evenly into loaf pan. Let it bake 50 min, or until knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before you remove from the pan, then cool on rack for another 30 minutes before slicing.

These recipes serve about 4 adults. Because our kids are still little (we have 4 kids), we can get away with not doubling it ... yet. However, if your family is larger, or "big eaters" you may want to double it. ~K

Oh, and I've got to give credit where is is due. These great recipes come from the cookbook "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" by Mollie Katzen. The entire cookbook is phenomenal!

17 comments:

Gayle said...

This sounds yummy...and I like peas! There have been some great recipes so far. I knew you'd have some good ones!

Christin said...

Sweet stuff! unfortunately we tried the whole pea soup thing last week and you would've thought we were serving our kids Soup a la Roadkill.

And we even LIKE peas. What gives?

Amanda said...

Yum, yum, yum -- this sounds SO good! I'm going to have to try it, and I'm going to have to pick up the cookbook. Thanks for sharing.

javamamma said...

Got to be honest - the bread sounds way better to me than the soup. But when you consider what I ate yesterday, you may nod your head with understanding.
~2 cinnamon rolls
~naan bread - fried and regular with spinach dip and whatever yummy green dip they serve at 'Taste of India'
~scones with whip cream
Do we see a pattern here? :)

Robin said...

THANK YOU for the pea soup recipe! My main new years resolution is simply to make soup every wednesday-but I need recipes, and this one is great! Soup-er!

Mrs. Darling said...

I want to try that pea soup recipe even though I know I will be the only one in the family to eat it!

ConservaChick said...

OK guys. You have to try the soup! Your kids WILL like it. Unless they wont eat anything green. This soup is sweet and creamy, and doesn't taste healthy. I bet even Javamamma would like it.

Christin, It's the recipe. We usually hate pea soup... this recipe is worth a try. Even my son who only likes pb and j likes it.~K

EEEEMommy said...

I've never heard of such a thing. Cottage cheese bread, huh? I do have some cottage cheese in the fridge, so I think I'm going to have to try it. And we all love peas, so it sounds like we'd like this soup.
I hope you share more vegitarian recipes, I'm such a carnivore, I don't have a clue how to cook without meat.

Becky said...

Sounds delicious...especially that bread. I'll have to give that one a whirl.

MyKidsMom said...

Okay, 2 of my kids are pea-haters (the other one loves them) but I'm going to try it anyway. And I might check out that cookbook too- thanks!

Anonymous said...

Karlie, these are wonderful recipes. I Love the soup recipe and I really hate pea soup as a rule. I am not that fond of peas period unless they are raw and I shell them myself. Then they're great. The bread is incredible. Unfortunately, I could eat the entire thing myself which would not be a good thing.

This is definitely a recipe that should be tried by all and shame on kids who won't try something just because it's green.

When my kids were little and they asked me what we were having for dinner, I would tell them we were having Hummingbird tongues, swamp water, dragon meat, baby trees, etc. They might not like it, but they usually tried it.

Stacey said...

I'm all about this, Karlie, thanks for sharing. I'm heading over to the swap right now. xo

CrossView said...

Actually sounds delicious! =D

And I know it would be cheaper to go meatless from time to time, but my big bad Marine would curl up in a fetal position and cry. I just know it. =P

Chelle said...

I can't wait to try these recipes. I'm always looking for great vegetarian recipes.

Alana said...

I'm going to have to check out this link! Thanks for sharing! Not a big fan of peas...but the bread sounds good!

Nessa said...

I was just thinking of some good homemade pea soup today. I'll try your recipe this weekend.

EEEEMommy said...

We tried this tonight and liked it, despite the fact that it wasn't puréed enough since my blender started smoking! Yikes!

The bread was good too! :)

Thanks for sharing!