Soup Night

I've mentioned before that we made up some new "rules" to govern our food shopping and menu planning.  The gist is that we are eating local and/or organic whenever possible and having 2-3 vegetarian dinners per week.  The vegetarian meals help us cut down on the grocery bill, because organic meat is expensive, and we believe eating less meat is good for our bodies too.

But now we are adding a new "rule"... Soup night!  We love soup at the 4 Pears house and even though it still isn't out of the 80's here yet, we've got to figure it will get chilly around here sometime soon.  Mr Pears is starting up his Tuesday night soccer league this week so having a Tuesday soup night works out great for us.  Soups can be made up during the day and reheated whenever someone is ready for dinner.  They are also easy to double and freeze to give myself a break from slaving away in the kitchen. ;)

Last week I made a really simple tomato soup with some grilled cheese sandwiches and this week I'm going to try another tomato-based soup, this one with Indian spices and pinto beans.  And soup night isn't complete without some homemade french baguettes.  If you haven't tried these yet, you should!  They are so quick (2 hours start to finish) and easy to make.

Some of my other favorite soups include:

Lobster Bisque - super super easy and really good!
French Onion- time-consuming but totally worth it

Spicy Pumpkin Soup - pumpkin....soup....delicious
Minestrone - a vegetable soup that is anything but bland (but does include some bacon)

image from foodnetwork.com

Visit my Recipe Index page for a few more soup recipes and stay tuned for plenty of new soups this fall/winter!