Pumpkin, bacon, Parmesan soup

A few years ago, I made my first pumpkin and bacon soup. You don't have to do much to make it tasty. And you don't have to use pumpkin (one of the tougher squashes to find out of season). My favourite is hubbard, which is also great for dishes like warm squash salad where you don't want much moisture. 

Squash, onions, garlic, bacon, thyme. I ended up complicating it only a bit by enriching the broth with Parmesan, but it's really that simple.

Vegan walnut lettuce wraps

Readers and friends will know that I don't often go the vegan route. I'm more likely to serve a part of an animal you've never thought about eating than imitation meat. But when I saw a recipe for walnut lettuce wraps with jicama slaw and avocado cream, I was intrigued enough to try.

It turns out it's delicious. Prepared this way the walnuts are a much better stand-in for meat than TVP, the avocado sauce is better than soy-based sour cream, and put together the wraps were light and fresh tasting. They'd be good with some quesa fresca, but they were also good on their own.

I'd make two changes to the recipe: drain the jicama before you add it to the other slaw ingredients, and add a bit of cold water to the blender if your avocado cream is too thick.

Watercress and Mahimahi soup

Greetings, friends! It's been a while.

Some time last year I tried making a watercress and leek soup. It was okay, but missing something when hot, even though it was quite tasty cold.

Tonight I decided to give it another go, but with some changes to deal with the fact that I didn't have a few ingredients for the original recipe and wanted to incorporate some protein. The results were much tastier, but still healthy. Rejoice! Then make soup.