October 2006 Archives

Make Season Spanning Italian Vegetable Beef Soup

October 31, 2006

Looking for a good way to use up all of your left over vegetables? Try vegetable beef soup. We love soup anyway and this soup was concocted from the ingredients I had on hand. It's quite spicy and rich so you may want to start slowly as you add the spicier ingredients. I like spoon-sized vegetables in my soup so you feel as if you are eating something substantial.

This is the beef I used but your soup will be successful with even cheaper cuts of beef, such as beef for beef stew, or pot roast. I also like the mix of summer and winter vegetables. I didn't add any salt to the recipe since the commercial broth product was already salty. Your experience may vary depending on the broth product you use.

Season Spanning Italian Vegetable Beef Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil
Beef – 2 pounds sirloin steak, cut in cubes
I large onion, chopped
10 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
4 carrots, chopped
6 stalks of celery, chopped
2 small, hot red peppers, chopped fine (I used cayenne.)
½ small green pepper, chopped
4 potatoes, chopped
1 cup of wine (cabernet or merlot)
6 cups of beef stock (1 water)
1 teaspoon black pepper (I added no salt, as the commercial stock was salty enough.)
1 teaspoon ancho chili pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons oregano
2 teaspoons thyme
3 bay leaves
2 zucchini, chopped
4 ounces mushrooms
¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped
½ cup frozen corn, defrosted
24 ounces canned diced tomatoes

Begin by heating the olive oil in a large pan. Add the beef and brown it. Remove the meat from the pan. Add the onions and garlic and sauté in the remaining oil until the onion softens and you have scraped up any browned bits from browning the meat, about 5 minutes. Then, add the carrots, celery, red peppers, green pepper, potatoes, wine, and beef stock. Add the ancho chili pepper, cayenne pepper, oregano, thyme, and bay leaves. Bring the soup just about to a boil and then, reduce the temperature and simmer the soup for a half hour. Add the zucchini and mushrooms. Simmer for ten minutes. Add the parsley, corn, and tomatoes. Simmer just a couple of minutes more until a fork inserted in a potato tells you the vegetables are cooked. Season Spanning Italian Vegetable Beef Soup serves 8.

Consider serving the soup with a green salad though it is not necessary. A good artisan loaf of bread was delicious with the soup. If I were making this recipe again, I’d add rosemary. I’d let the meat simmer for awhile in the stock before adding the vegetables.

Soups like this, with the tomatoes and peppers, can be quite acidic. I have found that adding a pinch or two of corn starch at the end cuts down the acidity.

_{Image Copyright Seattle Steve}

Copper Harbor to St. Ignace

October 15, 2006

Today, after a grueling drive from Copper Harbor to St. Ignace, we're at the Best Western Harbour Pointe Lakefront in St. Ignace, Michigan. Our room is twenty-five feet from Lake Huron and overlooks Mackinac Island. Sitting out on the balcony as I write this afternoon, the thrill of being this close to the water is amazing. The waves lap in the water and the seagulls strut below the balcony and complain because I am not feeding them.

I unequivocally recommend this hotel. It is clean and attractive; the setting is beautiful. The grounds are carefully maintained. Most rooms have water views, or you can choose, as we did, to stay right on the water. The sacrifice? I cannot connect to the high speed wireless network from here because the lakefront rooms have trouble reaching the network. What a sacrifice for a room right on the water! Plus, we're supposed to be on vacation, so why am I online anyway?

Our drive today was glorious. We took the Brockway Mountain Dr. out of Copper Harbor because it is supposed to afford one of the most beautiful views in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It did. The overlooks from the drive of our hotel, the Keweenaw Lodge and its golf course, the forests of the Keweenaw Peninsula, Lake Manganese, Lake Fanny Hooe, and Lake Superior were awe inspiring. Bill didn't take many pictures because you cannot capture that kind of panoramic view with a lens. You have to see it to behold its beauty and its power.