Sunday ends with Soup

Sunday Afternoon Pasta

My dad and Gina stopped by after a morning of shopping to check out our new digs and have some lunch with us. Lucky for us, yesterday was European Market day and there were some lovely shucked clams and big ‘n tasty sea scallops fresh from the Maine coast in our minimally stocked fridge.

I quickly cooked up some brown rice spaghetti, and sautéed some carrots and kale in the cast iron frying pan. Half way through the preparation of the meal I realized that we had not yet packed and moved the salt and pepper. Once again I was saved by my own recent shopping spree at the market. There is a new vendor selling sea vegetables and sea salt harvested off the coast of Maine. I had a bag of lovely, purple and salty dulse sea vegetable at the ready. I cooked the carrots and kale with the dulse which made a lovely side dish. Then I added a large serving of the dusle to a pan with several cloves of chopped garlic, about ¼ cup of mirin cooking wine and some champagne vinegar. I cooked the scallops and clams in this sauce with the lid on. I then tossed the spaghetti with the sea-food and garnished the pasta with freshly chopped flat leaf parsley and chopped pine nuts. If you’re trying to cut out dairy but crave a rich, crumbly topping for pasta or veggies, I highly recommend pine nuts. Since I recently found a little electric food chopper at an auction, I’m chopping nuts like crazy and find that the rich, crunchy texture of chopped nuts can’t be beat!

Sorry that we didn’t take any pictures. I do hope to have some up of our dinner this evening. Mike is making soup!!

As Promised:
Mike makes Bean Soup!!


Sunday morning I decided to soak a combination of kidney, pinto and pink beans. Who knew that Goya® stocked our local Maine grocery stores? My intentions were to make a hearty soup with the three beans and some of the greens I collected at the market on Sunday. My favorite vegetable farmers had “kohlrabi” greens available. Kohlrabi is usually sold as a root vegetable. But apparently we’ve had enough frost to stunt the growth of these veggies so that our friends at Fisher Farms decided to sell the greens. Tonight marks the first time I am ever eating these particular greens. The soup will also contain some buttercup squash, onions, garlic, two hot peppers and a couple of bay leaves.
Before cooking up the soup Mike dashed out to our new local supermarket to pick up some essentials. (onions included!). Because I’m a funny, funny woman, I wrote him out a list that included raisins, onions, and sweet loving. He came back with raisins, onions, roses and white wine. He’s the sweetest most loving man alive. (Of course I am rather biased)
Mike cooked up a big batch of sweet born rice, started the soup with sautéed onions and garlic and added some kombu sea vegtable, bay leaves and hot pepper to simmer with the beans. When the beans were just about done he added some chopped buttercup squash. Finally, as the beans were tender and ready, Mike added the greens. We’re going to dress the soup with some brown rice vinegar. We’ve already consumed one bottle of wine! And there’s Mike eating soup (and sneaking in some bread!).