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Hi.

Welcome to This Awful/Awesome Life! My name is Frances Joyce. I am the publisher and editor of this magazine. We'll be exploring different topics each month to inform, entertain and inspire you. Meet new authors, sharpen your brain and pick up a few tips on life, love, entertaining and business. Enjoy and please share!

January 2021 in the Twelve Months of Soup by Fran Joyce

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2021 should be a year of healing and recovery for all of us. This year I’ll be featuring “The Twelve Months of Soup.” If you make your own soup you can control the sodium and add healthy vegetables to your diet. In addition to twelve tasty soups, I’ll be featuring six salads and six sandwiches to pair with these soups for a complete meal. There are so many delicious soups – it was hard to choose just twelve. I tried to base my selections on things like weather, availability of fresh produce, traditions/holidays, and popularity. Throughout the year, I’ll be making some of my favorite soups and I hope they’ll become your favorites.

Several years ago, I interviewed a local chef who shared with me one of his best secrets -waste nothing. He saved the peelings, skins, and ends from every vegetable and they ended up in his soup stock/broths. There are several good websites that show you how to make your own stock/broth and differing opinions about which vegetables to add or omit. He was for using everything and following his philosophy, I’ve never made a bitter or bad tasting broth. When you make your own broth, you can control the sodium, add spices for a specific soup or keep your broth more generic, and you can make a large batch to freeze for later use.

Let’s start the year right with Chicken soup and a sunny citrus salad. January is typically a cold month, and nothing makes you feel warm and cozy like a nice One of the things I love about soup is that you can find a great recipe and adjust it to suit your family. I found this great recipe from Tyler Florence for Chicken Noodle Soup, https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/chicken-noodle-soup-recipe0-1941332.

I like this recipe because Tyler Florence includes a recipe for Chicken broth that’s easy to follow and delicious if you don’t usually make your own. My family prefers more of a chicken vegetable soup over traditional chicken noodle, so I made a few modifications to the recipe by adding peas, parsnips, celery root and diced potatoes. I sauteed the parsnips, potatoes, and celery root with the garlic, onions, carrots, and celery in the recipe. I used farfalle instead of egg noodles because I think they’re more fun. Typically, I make my pasta in a separate pan and add it to the soup bowls, so the noodles don’t absorb all the broth. I also baked a chicken the day before I planned to make soup. I used the carcass and juices in my broth and the leftover dark and white meat in the soup.

I like the idea of this cozy soup and a sunny salad to reminds us of warmer days, so I paired the soup with this recipe for mandarin orange salad by Kristen Chidsey of A Mind “Full” Mom,  https://amindfullmom.com/mandarin-orange-salad/. The salad is simple and quick to make. The mandarin orange slices, almond slivers, and dried cranberries add additional color to the spring mix greens. It’s pretty and when you serve it to your family or guests, they’ll think you went to a lot of trouble. The orange dressing is the perfect finish.

Both recipes were a hit with the family. Next month I’ll be making Seafood Bisque and a Strawberry Spinach Salad with a Champagne Vinaigrette Dressing – perfect for a romantic Valentine’s Day meal.

The Twelve Months of Soup

January – Chicken Noodle Soup and Mandarin Orange Salad

February – Seafood Bisque and Strawberry Spinach Salad with Champagne Vinaigrette Dressing

March – Potato and Leek Soup and Beet Salad

April – Vegetarian Vegetable Soup with a Vegetable Panini

May – Black Bean Soup and Mexican Kale Salad

June – Italian Wedding Soup with a Chicken Wrap

July – Minestrone Soup with a Hoagie

August – Broccoli Cheddar Soup with Quinoa Salad

September – Tomato Basil Soup with a grilled Cheese Sandwich

October – Slow Cooker Black Bean Chili and Pomegranate and Wild Rice Salad

November – Butternut Squash Soup with a turkey sandwich

December – Split Pea Soup with a Ham Sandwich

 

 

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