A trio of soups to warm our hearts

 

Cream of spinach soup

When I signed up for a buyout at work, everyone seemed to wonder what magnificent plans I had. My internal response was something like "Plans? I'm required to have plans??) My external response was that making a big vat of soup and curling up under a mound of covers with a good book sounded like a great winter break to me. 

But first came Christmas and New Year's cooking/baking hoopla, and I found myself in January with no prepared soups or finished books to my credit and somehow not the inertia to get started on either front. So to get out of my rut, I turned to three women with bona fide credentials, all three of them with an ode to soup cookbook under their belt: Barbara Kafka, Mollie Katzen and Betty Rosbottom.

So now my refrigerator is stuffed with soups to weave into the weekly menu, and I've been making a slight dent in the stack of books at long last, although now punctuated by breaks for doomscrolliing. They may not all be chicken soups, but they're still good for the soul, and we need that right now. I love my adopted city of Minneapolis, and it needs all the soup and good will it can get. It has been supremely weird to not at least be on the sidelines at work during this crisis. and I wish my former coworkers all the vibes in their work to share truth. Covering a persistent, pervasive, mutable story is a sort of journalistic death march where the ground heaves beneath you while you get insufficient rest and still debate and refine every word choice. Wishing them all the soups.

Cream of spinach soup

Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s “Soups.” Serves 6 to 8 as a soup plate size serving.

Ingredients

1 large onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 cups water
2 teaspoons salt
10-16 ounces of fresh spinach leaves, stems trimmed (I used 2 5-ounce boxes)
5 medium garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1½ cups hot milk
Pinch of white pepper
Pinch of nutmeg

Method

Place onion, potatoes and salt in a large pot. Add water and bring to a simmer, cooking covered until potatoes are tender. Add spinach and garlic and set aside until cool enough to puree the mixture.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a medium saucepan. Stir in flour and cook a minute. Slowly add milk, whisking as you go. Cook and stir over low heat until mixture is smooth and slightly thickened. It makes a thin white sauce. Stir into pureed vegetable  mixture and heat through before serving.(Alternatively, you can skip the butter and flour step and just stir the hot milk directly into the soup if you want to make it gluten-free.)

Rating: This makes a dandy soup I would make again. Tasty, and a bright, vibrant green. If you were looking for a garnish, maybe a dollop of savory whipped cream would do. It's reminiscent of this heavenly spinach vichyssoise recipe, but heavier on the spinach than the potato. I just used a stick blender, but if I was serving this for company, I'd recommend using a blender or food processor to get a finer texture.

I'm not sure why cabbage gets top billing in this recipe title since zucchini provides the largest share. 

Cabbage-dill potage

From Barbara Kafka's "Soup: A Way of Life," a truly lovely title. Serves 6 to 8 depending on preferred serving size.

Note: The recipe calls for using a zucchini base that you have made ahead in summer during its abundance and stashed in the freezer to pull out one of several soup recipes in the book that utilize it, but you can also just make it at the same time as the soup. Kafka calls for a food mill as the first choice for processing the vegetation, but I don't have one so I stuck with the food processor.

Ingredients
4 medium zucchini
1 tablespoon butter
½ pound mashing potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (about two medium potatoes)
Half a small cabbage, chopped small, about 2 cups
2 large leeks, whites and 1-inch of pale green parts, cleaned and cut into ½-inch pieces
4 cups water
2 tablespoons chopped dill, plus more for optional garnish

Method

Peel zucchini and slice into quarters lengthwise, then ½-inch chunks. Heat butter over low heat in a large saucepan. Toss zucchini with butter, cover and simmer for 45 minutes. At this point you can puree the mixture and freezer it until ready to use, or proceed with the recipe.

Combine potatoes, cabbage, leeks and 4 cups water in a large pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, covered. Transfer cooked vegetables to a food processor to puree and then return to liquid in pot along with zucchini puree. If, like me, you're making it all at once, I just added the cooked, chopped zucchini to the soup pot and used a stick blender to mix the entire lot at once. 

Add chopped dill and salt and pepper to taste. (The original recipe called for 5 teaspoons, but I found 3 teaspoons to be a great plenty.) Drizzle with some olive oil if desired and garnish with extra dill.

Rating: Decent soup, flavorwise. Rather thick, but that's not a horrible thing in a soup in January by any means. Like many soups, the flavor improves with time. The zucchini base approach has merit worth revisiting in summer. My version of that is to chop up a zucchini with whatever else is in season and roast them, then freeze 3 to 4 cups of the mixture to add later to a frittata or to mix with beans, broth and pesto for a soup.

Forgot to put on the garnish when I was photographing the leftovers so you'll just have to imagine that bit.

Colorado chicken soup with black beans, corn and pepitas

From "Soup Nights" by Betty Rosbottom. Serves 8 heartily as main dish servings.

Note: Choose the biggest pot you've got for this one. I opted for a pretty big pot, but my Le Creuset #32 Dutch oven (aka Mega Blue)  was barely big enough to contain all of it so I wished I'd chosen the one we refer to as Bigger than Blue.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
⅔ cup chopped celery
½ cup diced carrots
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1½ teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon Spanish smoked paprika
6 cups chicken broth
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes and their juice
1 4-ounce can green chilis
4 cups shredded cooked chicken
2 cups fresh corn kernels, or frozen and thawed

½ cup roasted pepitas, optional
½ cilantro leaves

Method

In really large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, celery, carrots and garlic and cook until just starting to soften. Add oregano, cumin and paprika and cook for about a minute. Add broth, tomatoes and juices and green chilis. Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Add chicken and corn and heat through.

Optional garnish: Combine pepitas and cilantro in a food processor and use as soup topping. Or just garnish with chopped cilantro.

Rating: If I were to make this soup again, I'd either cut the amount of chicken in half or leave it out altogether. Dave, of course, was fine with the abundance of chicken involved since it made it very filling, but for me, the soup had an odd disconnect between the super thick chicken and beans and the thinness of the broth portion of the soup. I found that when I took bites that didn't have any chicken in it I liked it more, so I think it would make a not bad vegetable bean soup. I would opt for just using chopped cilantro as a garnish next time or else add oil to the pepitas and cilantro to make a pesto; as it is, it didn't really work for me as a garnish. The cilantro flavor is a nice addition, but if you're one of those who finds that off-putting, chopped parsley would do. It is a comparatively fast fix and pantry/freezer friendly, so it has that in its favor.

Soup's on. Stay warm, stay whatever safe looks like to you and carry on. 

Three winter salads, plus a whine about a Gmail setting

Roasted squash salad with bacon and pumpkin seeds

A trio of salads: Kale cobb salad, radicchio salad with blue cheese dressing, roasted squash salad with bacon

All of these salads were brought to you by winter: They combine sturdy ingredients into robust salads while we wait out the season where lettuce won't grow with grace. So instead, think kale, and its obliging partner, bacon. Radicchio and roasted squash. Greens with roasted squash AND bacon.

One of the salads was also brought to you by a combination of irritation and opportunity. Dave flagged a Huffington Post article alerting that there was an automatic opt-in for Gmail users that could allow Google access to your messages and attachments to train AI models. Ish. It shared instructions for the two places to turn off smart features that allow this harvesting, and since that seemed like something I don't want in place, I dutifully turned it off.

And then found out, of course, just what all is joined at the hip in smart features. I could possibly live with out grammar check or autospelling, but everything all in one email inbox? Ugh. Plus, they only let you tailor your inbox notifications if you enable smart features. Double ugh. That leaves you with the option of either opting out of most promotional email (gasp, how will I find out when Harney's and Penzey's have a sale when I need to stock up??) or risk missing an actually vital email amid all the crud. 

So, for now, I've caved and am on a mission to kill down my overall inbox before I try again, opting out as I go. To say that I've never been an inbox-zero person for anything other than the equivalent in Slack is putting it mildly. My promotions box had ballooned to more than 17,000. I've now got that down below 2,500, but I'm loath to just kill out everything without looking through, because hello, recipes! Like the recipe for radicchio salad with blue cheese, below. Sure, I got the magazine in October, but it apparently didn't trigger my interest until I saw it promoted in my Gmail and remembered that I have both radicchio and gorgonzola in my frig that need using.

So I'm wading through the rest of the messages, and really irritated by one trend that can't be over soon enough: Promotional emails designed to trade on shame, guilt, anxiety and other malaise. I'm looking at you, Martha Stewart minions. Amid the potentially useful how-tos like how to make sour cream or reuse old sheets are these stink bombs: 

9 hosting habits that guests secretly despise

12 sneaky reasons your home never feels completely clean

The 6 worst front door colors for curb appeal

7 home decor mistakes you should avoid

6 outdated garden trends

She's not alone in the negative phrasing, by any means. A quick search for "never" in my promotions box unearthed a trove of headlines destined for inbox trash. Colors to never paint your bathroom, etc. A cleaning step you always miss. "Wrong" is another big offender, along with "mistake," as in "You're making scrambled eggs wrong," instead of "how to make terrific scrambled eggs."

Along with umbrage. I have taken delight in killing out these joy zappers. I would paint my bathroom one of the never-do colors, but I've forgotten what they were already, because you should be able to paint your bathroom whatever color makes you happy.

But I did get at least one decent recipe out of the inbox before deleting it. Only 2,500 to go, and then it's off to zapping NextDoor rants.

Roasted squash salad with bacon and pumpkin seeds

Adapted from Cooking Light. I can't find the original recipe to link to but I believe it was in the October 2005 issue. If you’re looking to restore its lightness, go for cooking spray instead of olive oil, 1 slice of bacon instead of 3 and half the amount of dressing.  Serves 6 as a side course or 4 as a main dish.

Ingredients

4 cups cubed and peeled butternut squash (1-inch cubes), half of a medium squash

2 teaspoons olive oil

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

3 slices of bacon

1 medium shallot, minced

10 cups mixed salad greens, about 10 ounces

Toasted pumpkin seeds for garnish

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss squash with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes or until tender, stirring once half way through cooking time. 

Combine vinegar, mustard and a sprinkling of salt and pepper in a large bowl. 

Cook bacon until crisp. Remove from pan and chop into pieces when cool enough to handle. In bacon fat, cook shallots until just tender. Add shallots and some of the bacon fat to vinegar mixture in bowl and combine. Add greens to bowl and toss to mix. 

Place mixed greens on plates. Top each plate with bacon and pumpkin seeds. 

Rating: A nice tasty main course for lunch along with a bowl of soup. The bacon fat helps temper the sharp tang of the vinegar and mustard and the squash mellows things out. A fairly fast fix and reasonably pantry friendly, so I might pull this one out again.

Kale cobb salad

Adapted from Rachael Ray Magazine July/August 2015

Note: The original recipe specified turkey, but I no longer see cooked turkey breasts in stores the way I used to, so I opted for chicken. Depending on the size of your bacon, you may find like I did that three slices of bacon would overwhelm the salad. If your bacon is the thin spindly type, opt for three slices, but if it’s Midwestern farmers market-cut bacon, two is plenty. Serves 2 amply as a main dish salad.

Ingredients
 ¼ cup olive oil
 ¼ cup chopped shallots
 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
 1 bunch kale, stems removed and leaves roughly chopped (Dinosaur kale works well here)
 2-3 slices bacon, cooked and roughly chopped (see note)
 2 ounces cooked turkey or chicken breast, chopped
 2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
 1 avocado, chopped
 2 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese (I used Deer Creek’s Blue Jay since I had part of a wedge to use up)

Method
Combine olive oil, shallots, vinegar and mustard in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste.  In a large bowl, combine kale leaves and all but about a tablespoon or so of the dressing. Massage in dressing to mix well and soften kale.

Put dressed kale on two plates. Top each with half the chopped bacon, turkey, eggs, avocado and blue cheese. Drizzle top with remaining dressing. Season top with cracked pepper.

Rating: Dave really liked it, possibly because it's a very sturdy salad. It didn't blow me away, but it is a good sort of salad for using up bits of things.

Radicchio salad with blue cheese dressing

From Bon Appetit, October 2025

Note: If you can’t find blanched hazelnuts, the recipe suggests walnuts, pecans or almonds can also work. If you can only find raw hazelnuts and want to blanch them, heat a quart of water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil and add 1 tablespoon of baking soda per cup of hazelnuts. Once the fizz dies down, add raw hazelnuts and boil for 4 minutes. Then drain the hazelnuts and plunge into ice water. At this point, the skins will largely slip right off. But while it’s easy, it’s still time-consuming, because it’s amazing how many individual hazelnuts are in a half cup, so I highly recommend this as a do-ahead step, Is it absolutely necessary to remove the skins? Technically, no, they are edible. But once you try toasting them you’ll find out that the skins are then sort of half on half off and the loose skins aren’t generally the texture you’re looking for in most recipes. There are some recipes that call for skin-on, but I’d advise following whatever the recipe suggests for blanched vs. raw.

The recipe also suggests you can use a mix of the standard reddish-purple radicchio we tend to see in stores locally with the less commonly seen castelfranco radicchio, a very pretty burgundy-dappled green leaf variety, which I might have to try from seed, because gosh, that’s lovely.

Ingredients

4 ounces blue cheese (I used Gorgonzola)
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
½ cup blanched whole hazelnuts
½ medium butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon rosemary leaves, lightly chopped
¼ teaspoon salt
1 medium head radicchio, separated into leaves
1 medium head endive, leaves separated and torn if large
1 small shallot, thinly sliced, divided

Method

Combine blue cheese, olive oil, vinegar, syrup, Dijon mustard and ½ teaspoon kosher salt and pepper in a blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. (it will be thick-ish.) This can be made up to a couple of days ahead; it stays emulsified.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and toast blanched hazelnuts (see note) on a rimmed baking sheet for 8 to 10 minutes until nuts pick up a slight color, shaking once as it bakes.  Set aside to cool.

Leave oven at 400 degrees. Toss squash cubes with 2 tablespoons olive oil, rosemary and ¼ teaspoon salt. Arrange in a single layer on rimmed baking sheet and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until the cubes are tender and pick up a bit of color.

Combine radicchio, endive and a pinch of salt and generous grind of pepper in a large bowl. Add squash and about half each of the dressing, the hazelnuts and the shallot slices, tossing to combine well and coat leaves with dressing. Add more dressing if needed. Mound onto plates or a platter, then garnish with remaining hazelnuts and shallots. You can pass the remaining dressing on the side if you like or save for another use.

Rating: I would describe this recipe as better as a sum of its parts than any individual component. The blue cheese dressing is very unlike your standard white stuff out of a bottle. Unlike some dressings that you would marry, drench anything with or engage in other obsessive behavior, on its own it's interesting but not one you would write home about. It makes copious leftovers, and my first thought was what the heck am I going to use that for? But after trying the salad, I would say it works. The main impressions of the salad are crunchiness and really nice residual flavor.  It's a good choice paired with an otherwise mild meal, like roasted pork tenderloin and brown rice. Not the lookiest of salads, and some of the flavors might be a little assertive for less adventuresome eaters, so I don't know that I'd trot this one out for company as is.

Leftover note: I opted for cutting down the fresh ingredients to make a more consumable portion, since I figured the mixed salad wouldn't really keep well. That meant I also had some roasted squash with rosemary leftover to use to make a pizza topping with goat cheese and bacon. As for that dressing, it takes sturdy greens like kale and shaved Brussels sprouts to stand up to it. It doesn't really lend itself to being repurposed as a dip or spread.

Golden raisin honey quick bread

This recipe was brought to you by freezing rain. I realized that we didn't have enough bread on hand for breakfast and had no wish to slip-slide my way down the hill to the bakery on foot or four wheels. Dave of course went out for a walk anyway, but at least this way I didn't feel responsible if he fell, which I would have if he'd fallen on the way there or back. He did admit to ice surfing in an attempt to stay upright while out for a walk. Always glad to find another likely what's-in-the-house quick bread recipe to meet such minor natural disasters.

Golden raisin honey loaf

From Country Living’s “Country Mornings Cookbook.” This 1989 tome is still available new.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups flour
1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup vegetable shortening
1 cup golden raisins
2 large eggs
½ cup milk
½ cup honey
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

Method

Preheat oven to 325. Flour and grease a loaf pan.

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Cut in vegetable shortening with a pastry blender or two knives until it resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in raisins.

Beat together the eggs, milk, honey and lemon zest. Stir into dry ingredients until just combined. Spoon into loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a cake tester like a toothpick comes out clean. (I would err on the side of longer if in doubt; it took all of an hour to get rid of the soggy center.) Cool in pan for 10 minutes and then completely on a rack before slicing.

Rating: Nice flavor, fast to mix up and pantry friendly. I could see making it with whatever dried fruit and fruit zest is in the house as needed.