Tag Archives: vegan

Spicy carrot avocado soup

Carrot avocado soup in a bowlWhile we were waiting for the Moroccan beef stew to cook we realized we were starving right away and didn’t want to wait two hours so we whipped up this raw vegan soup that’s heavily inspired by the “I Am Divine” recipe in the I Am Grateful book of recipes.  It’s pretty quick and of course juicing the carrots and lemon yourself gives you the freshest possible flavor.  We actually doubled the below recipe but I’ll give this version because it fits, barely, in a standard blender.

Basil basil everywhere.

Basil basil everywhere.

  • 2 c. carrot juice (2 – 2½ lb. of carrots through the juicer)
  • 2 avocados
  • 1 tbsp. minced ginger
  • 4 tsp. lemon juice (half a lemon juiced)
  • ½ jalapeno pepper
  • ½ tsp. chopped garlic (one large clove)
  • ¼ tsp. cayenne pepper
  • 15 large basil leaves
  • 4 tsp. olive oil
  • 5 mint leaves
Yummy avocados, perfectly ripe.

Yummy avocados, perfectly ripe.

Put it all in a blender.  If your blender isn’t super fancy it might be worth doing the ginger through the mint leaves in a food processor first and then put that all into the blender with the carrot juice and avocados.

The soup in the blender.

The soup in the blender.

Enjoy straight out of the blender.

Pouring the soup into a bowl

Ketchup for the masses

The finished bowl of ketchup.

Ketchup!

Edna was inspired to make shrimp cocktail last night so this morning we did some running around to get ingredients. A key component of this cocktail is ketchup but store bought bottled ketchup is all jacked full of stuff that nobody really should be eating so we made our own. We started with a base from elsewhere on the web but of course had to tweak it since what we were left with really just didn’t taste much like ketchup quite honestly.

  • 4 lb. tomatoes, diced
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • ½ c. unsweetened apple juice
  • a couple of shakes of cayenne pepper
  • 3 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
  • 1 bay leaf
  • ½ tsp. whole cloves
  • 1 tsp. celery seed
  • 1 tsp. black peppercorns
  • ½ c. lemon juice
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tbsp. garlic powder

For the apple juice we chose to juice a couple of Braeburn apples instead of using store bought juice.  That’s just our bag.

Tomatoes diced, onion and garlic next to come.

The primary ingredients.

Put everything up to and including the vinegar into a soup pot and bring it to a boil. Wrap all of the spices (from the bay leaf up through the peppercorns) in some cheesecloth or a proper spice bag if you have one and toss it into the boiling mixture.

Spices in cheesecloth.

The spice bag.

After it’s boiled down about 50%, pour in the lemon juice and fish out the spice bag and let it keep boiling for about ten more minutes.  Check the flavor; at this point we just didn’t feel that it was tasting like ketchup so we added the salt and garlic power; adjust these to your liking.

The ketchup boiling down.

On the stove.

Once you’re done boiling it, pour it into a blender and smooth it out. Allegedly it’ll keep about a week in the fridge or you can freeze it.