Happy Earth Day!

Corn soup with arugula, beet, and walnut salad

Because it was Earth Day, I decided to make a vegetarian dinner. Here's how I worked it out in my head, "I don't know, I just felt like, you know, with all the stuff you read about how bad meat is for the environment, well... its a little something." It was a little difficult to do the
planning - I was really jones-ing for some bacon - but I stuck to my guns (stuck to my greens?) and made a totally vegetarian dinner!

Armed with 4 pounds of canned corn leftover from the weekend's chili making adventure, and a fresh box of produce from the CSA, I threw together a corn soup. It was FANTASTIC! Here's how it goes:

1. Heat oil and 1 tablespoon of butter in large pot.
2. Chop up one onion (I used red, but whatever you have on hand is fine) and put it in pot. (You want them fragrant and translucent - about 5 minutes.
3. While onions cook, chop 4 cloves of garlic, throw it in pot. Put them in the pot with the onions, cook until fragrant about 1 minute more.
4. Chop 5 small red potatoes into eighths, put in pot.
5. Add corn (probably 3-4 cans)
6. Pour in vegetable stock until it covers the rest of the ingredients in the pot.
7. Add salt, cayenne pepper, and saffron
8. Simmer, uncovered, for about an hour and a half - add more water if it gets too thick
9. EMULSIFY! Or blend it in the blender in small batches. (NOT big batches, trust me on this one, it is a recipe for disaster.)

While soup is simmering down:
1. Wash, peel, and slice golden beets. Put slices on baking pan, drizzle olive oil and salt on and put it in the oven. (Or if your oven refuses to work, as mine did this evening, put it into two batches and put it in the toaster oven. This does not give the same even cooking that using a big oven would have, but sometime you gotta do what you gotta do.)
2. Wash and chop arugula
3. Briefly roast walnuts
4. Make simple salad dressing of lemon, olive oil, and salt.

Happy Earth Day!