Soup Challenge 2010

Whew... just finished Soup #52... thus completing a year's worth of Saskatchewan-based soups. Over the month of December I cooked up:

Week 49 - Lentil and Sausage
Week 50 - Pork Shish Kabob (made with leftover shish kabob)
Week 51 - Chicken Noodle (which became...)
Week 51 1/2 - Chicken Carrot and Chickpea
Week 52 - Christmas Ham Spilt Pea Soup (made with leftover ham)

So, I must decide my new food resolution for 2011...

Soup Week 47 - Faba Bean

Larry Marshall, an organic farmer from Shellbrook, gave me a yogurt container filled with his dried faba beans. Like so many crops we grow in Saskatchewan, faba beans originate in the Middle East. (Rumour has it, faba beans were found in the ruins of Jericho, circa 6200 BCE.)

Also known as broad beans, they are gaining popularity among Saskatchewan farmers who practice crop rotation (planting different crops on the land each year, usually in a four-year cycle) thanks in part to new varieties developed at the University of Saskatchewan specifically for our growing conditions.

I wish I could tell you where to buy Saskatchewan-grown faba beans, but as far as I know, they are not available in stores.  

Soup Week 46 - Beans and Wieners

Suddenly it's cold, and hubby's working outdoors in the snow. Here's the view from my new kitchen window. Obviously, this man needs soup.

Soup Week 45 - Fish soup

Leftover Lake Diefenbaker trout, carrots, tomatoes and potatoes - and a fish stock made the day before with the fish head. Never discard a fish head...

Soup Week 44 - Memories of Meadow Lake

I picked up this bag of Yukon Gold potatoes in Meadow Lake while at a book event for Prairie Feast. Then John got overly ambitions and cooked up a mess of mashed potatoes. 

I will confide, I'm not a big fan of mashed potatoes, so I turned them into soup. Add onions, bacon and chanterelle mushrooms and, well, those mashed potatoes were mighty good. I hardly noticed them!

My Saskatchewan soup project is in the home stretch -- just a handful of weeks to go in my New Year's resolution to cook 52 soups, one for each week in 2010.