Introduction
One of
my favorite folktales is the beloved “Stone Soup”
because it exemplifies just how easy it is to make a delicious soup out of almost nothing at all. A little rice, some tomatoes from the garden, a zucchini run amuck, some fresh spring herbs, some dried beans; anything and everything is fair game in a soup, whether one simple ingredient or a mélange of scavenged odds and ends.
From the proverbial pot au feu —bubbling away for days on the back of a French housewife’s stove as scraps from each day’s meals were tossed in, ensuring that nothing edible went to waste—to the creations that I whip up in my kitchen today using a slow cooker and an immersion blender, soups are a surefire way to make comfort, economy, and warmth pervade even the most humble of homes.
Soups are versatile, serving as everything from a first course, to a light lunch, to a hearty, stand-alone meal, to a dessert, and in some cases, even a breakfast. I remember my surprise at finding green salad and miso soup on the breakfast buffet at Honolulu’s beautiful Halekulani Hotel, a traditional offering to the hotel’s Japanese guests. Soups can be casual or formal, creamy or full of texture, light or heavier, hot or cold. They can be loaded with complex flavors and techniques, or made of one ingredient.
Easy on the Planet, the Palate, and the Pocketbook
I wanted to do a slow cooker soups book partly because I love soup so much and partly because I feel that many consumers today are looking for stuff that is easy to make, soul satisfying, and easy on the planet, the palate, and the pocketbook.
There can be no question that soup can be easy on the pocketbook. A great soup can often be put together using nothing more than a bag of beans and some good spices, or a few leftovers with some bright vegetables. And I can usually get several meals out of a good slow cooker full of soup, eating some now and freezing some for another day. A simple bowl of soup will fill a hungry belly for just a few pennies’ worth of ingredients.
As for the planet, a good vegetable-based soup is far easier on the planet than is a juicy beef stew, for reasons that have been well exposed by a number of experts, beginning with
Frances Moore
Lappé in 1971 ( Diet for a Small Planet )
and
John Robbins ( Diet for a New America )
in 1987. It takes a heck of a lot more resources to put a pound of flesh on a steer than it does to grow an acre of lima beans or corn. Latest statistics show that vast tracts of necessary-to-our-survival
rain forests in South America
have been cleared to feed America’s burger habit, destroying not only our planet’s “lungs” but also the way of life of many indigenous cultures. Add to this the fact that you can often rely upon farmers’ markets for local produce, further reducing the impact on the
planet’s resources
made by trucking ingredients over long distances.
The recipes in this book simply focus on fruits, grains, and vegetables, all of which offer a much greater array of colors, flavors, and textures than would meat, and all with minimal impact on the
environment
. When I taught cooking to middle school students many years ago, we talked about how meats basically have one color theme, and not a lot of variation in texture, whereas the plant kingdom offers reds, yellows, blues, purples, greens, and oranges, and all shades in between, and variations in texture that range from very soft like a banana, to hard like an apple, to the seeded insides of brightly colored pomegranates and passion fruits, to carrots and avocados, all kinder to the environment.
I don’t mean to say that if you think you would enjoy one of the recipes more with some of last night’s roast chicken, a leftover ham bone, or a bit of fresh shrimp, that you shouldn’t be encouraged to add it. My neighbor Kathy, who eats every soup I make, sometimes adds chicken (which she loves to grill) to the soups to give her added protein. But I did want to
One of
my favorite folktales is the beloved “Stone Soup”
because it exemplifies just how easy it is to make a delicious soup out of almost nothing at all. A little rice, some tomatoes from the garden, a zucchini run amuck, some fresh spring herbs, some dried beans; anything and everything is fair game in a soup, whether one simple ingredient or a mélange of scavenged odds and ends.
From the proverbial pot au feu —bubbling away for days on the back of a French housewife’s stove as scraps from each day’s meals were tossed in, ensuring that nothing edible went to waste—to the creations that I whip up in my kitchen today using a slow cooker and an immersion blender, soups are a surefire way to make comfort, economy, and warmth pervade even the most humble of homes.
Soups are versatile, serving as everything from a first course, to a light lunch, to a hearty, stand-alone meal, to a dessert, and in some cases, even a breakfast. I remember my surprise at finding green salad and miso soup on the breakfast buffet at Honolulu’s beautiful Halekulani Hotel, a traditional offering to the hotel’s Japanese guests. Soups can be casual or formal, creamy or full of texture, light or heavier, hot or cold. They can be loaded with complex flavors and techniques, or made of one ingredient.
Easy on the Planet, the Palate, and the Pocketbook
I wanted to do a slow cooker soups book partly because I love soup so much and partly because I feel that many consumers today are looking for stuff that is easy to make, soul satisfying, and easy on the planet, the palate, and the pocketbook.
There can be no question that soup can be easy on the pocketbook. A great soup can often be put together using nothing more than a bag of beans and some good spices, or a few leftovers with some bright vegetables. And I can usually get several meals out of a good slow cooker full of soup, eating some now and freezing some for another day. A simple bowl of soup will fill a hungry belly for just a few pennies’ worth of ingredients.
As for the planet, a good vegetable-based soup is far easier on the planet than is a juicy beef stew, for reasons that have been well exposed by a number of experts, beginning with
Frances Moore
Lappé in 1971 ( Diet for a Small Planet )
and
John Robbins ( Diet for a New America )
in 1987. It takes a heck of a lot more resources to put a pound of flesh on a steer than it does to grow an acre of lima beans or corn. Latest statistics show that vast tracts of necessary-to-our-survival
rain forests in South America
have been cleared to feed America’s burger habit, destroying not only our planet’s “lungs” but also the way of life of many indigenous cultures. Add to this the fact that you can often rely upon farmers’ markets for local produce, further reducing the impact on the
planet’s resources
made by trucking ingredients over long distances.
The recipes in this book simply focus on fruits, grains, and vegetables, all of which offer a much greater array of colors, flavors, and textures than would meat, and all with minimal impact on the
environment
. When I taught cooking to middle school students many years ago, we talked about how meats basically have one color theme, and not a lot of variation in texture, whereas the plant kingdom offers reds, yellows, blues, purples, greens, and oranges, and all shades in between, and variations in texture that range from very soft like a banana, to hard like an apple, to the seeded insides of brightly colored pomegranates and passion fruits, to carrots and avocados, all kinder to the environment.
I don’t mean to say that if you think you would enjoy one of the recipes more with some of last night’s roast chicken, a leftover ham bone, or a bit of fresh shrimp, that you shouldn’t be encouraged to add it. My neighbor Kathy, who eats every soup I make, sometimes adds chicken (which she loves to grill) to the soups to give her added protein. But I did want to
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