Soup+Pasta=Success x2

Yikes–it’s December already! I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful.  Mine was really nice.   Brian and I spent the long weekend in Maine with my family and, despite the rain, enjoyed ourselves.  Unfortunately, being at home and on vacation meant I emphasized the “flexitarian” part of my diet and took the liberty to eat whatever I wanted.

Granted, I know one weekend of eating without thinking isn’t going to kill me, but I worked hard to come up with a healthier menu for this week.  I came up with some new vegetarian recipes to try out.  Imagine my delight when the first two dishes I tried out were really delicious.  I highly recommend them.

Creamy Broccoli Soup via Serious Eats

Have I mentioned I’m a sucker for soup?  Despite the fact that the recipe posted on Serious Eats is adapted from my most frequently used cookbook, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, I was a little suspicious of a broccoli soup that wasn’t full of cheese.

So, it’s green…and there’s no cheese.  But fear not: this soup is really good (and there’s sour cream and white wine, so that helps).  Plus it’s really simple–only 8 ingredients!  We used our new hand blender (sorry mom, we couldn’t wait to open the Christmas presents…) to puree the soup.  It didn’t make the soup completely smooth, but I think that’s an effect of the broccoli more than the blender.  However, a few spoonfuls in, the taste of the soup overwhelmed any minor texture issues.

Penne with Lemon, Potatoes, and Cannellini via Cheap Healthy Good

Yes, you read that right: pasta and potatoes. And spinach, cannellini beans, lemon juice and dried basil.  I found the recipe on Cheap Healthy Good’s list of bean recipes because I really want to include more beans in my diet.  As I cooked the recipe, I got really excited about it.  It just held a lot of promise.  And, when all was said and done (and it only took about half an hour!), the meal measured up to it’s promise.  Really, really satisfying and flavorful.  We added more spinach, sauce and some Calamata olives to the leftovers which increased the flavor even further.  This recipe is one that’s definitely going to go into my “meals in a pinch” pile.