Edamame Soup

As much as my roommates and I are cornbread people, we are perhaps equally soup people. Out of the five days we cooked this week, no less than three of us made soup. It is May. Yes, it's been cooling down on the weekends (enough that weather.com issued a SEVERE WEATHER ALERT for my area; I thought we were going to have freak tornadoes or something, but it turns out the temperature's just going to be in the fifties/sixties during the day and maybe in the low-ish forties at night; so I guess we'd all better hole up in our basements and prepare for the apocalypse, jeez). But not necessarily during the week, where it's been in the high seventies most of the time, if not higher. In a normal, non-soup-fanatical household, we probably wouldn't be eating soup three times in one mid-May week. But we are determined to eat as much soup as we can before the mere thought of doing so in the summer heat burns us up from the inside out.

We've even been scarfing down the leftovers. Maybe we have issues, but I'm okay with that, as long as we get to keep eating soup.

This edamame soup was my contribution this week. Somewhere between potato leek soup and cream of zucchini soup, it was surprisingly scrumptious, and very high in protein – because, if you didn't know, edamame beans are soybeans! I topped my soup with a slurry of extra virgin olive oil and sesame oil, and a pinch of caramelized onions.

Corn Cheese Chowder

I know it's May, but we're supposed to get rain this weekend, so hopefully soup isn't entirely inappropriate. Because this soup is one of my favorite soups, and is the reason why I always keep at least one can of creamed corn in my cupboards at all times, just in case. This is the soup that I will whip up as a lazy Saturday night dinner, or an I'm-so-hungry-I'm-losing-brainpower lunch after class.

Now, I'm used to making it with American cheese, but American cheese freaks some people out, so feel free to substitute some freshly-grated cheddar.

If you use cornstarch instead of flour, this should be gluten-free.

Orzo & Broccoli Pesto Salad

This is another vegetarian meal from last month, one that is actually surprisingly filling. Although we ate it in April, the pesto/salad would be a nice thing to make when it's unbearably hot out in the summer, if you don't want to have to fiddle with the oven, or spend too much time over the stove. Making any kind of pesto is always messy business, but you can always leave the cleanup for a little later, after you've sat down to enjoy the nice, cool meal you've created.

I served the pesto/salad with freshly-baked Lemon Poppy Seed Bread, using the same recipe as these muffins from February, but in loaf form.

(And yes, I am well aware of the fact that I need new pretty plates.)

Orange Mascarpone Tart

I learned something when I made this tart a month ago: I am not a cheesemaker.

The original recipe tells you how to make your own mascarpone cheese, which of course I was eager to try, if only because I needed heavy whipping cream for another recipe and could therefore kill two birds with one stone. I don't think my cheese turned out quite right, and I didn't enjoy attempting to make it as much as I thought I would (I got too impatient waiting for the temperature to rise). Maybe someday I will attempt to make cheese again in the future when I am more prepared, but that future is not now.

Still, I'm glad I tried it. And the tart still came out well, in spite of any cheese difficulties. It was even better that we had all the other ingredients on hand.

Oh. And I am in love with my tart pan and its removable bottom. It was $6.95 total, as I was doing a free trial of Amazon Prime at the time, and somehow finagled free shipping and no tax out of that. It was well worth it!

Orange Cranberry Scones

I am down to a small handful of cereal (plus crumbs), and one packet of dinosaur egg oatmeal (to be saved for emergencies, or cold weather). The yogurt is gone. I had pancakes, toast, and scrambled eggs at various points over the weekend. Needless to say, the breakfast options for this morning were very few, indeed. So I was quite lucky to run across a recipe for scones before my hunger zapped my capacity for all rational thought. (Sneaking crumbles of dough as I made the scones also helped stave off said hunger.)

Admittedly, that first recipe, that brilliant beacon of an idea to the half-starved (or thereabouts) called for unholy amounts of butter. You know how I am about butter. Yet Fate would not allow me to despair! It just so happened that, while checking my favorite food blogs, I saw a link that took me to another link that took me... to scones. Scones with not 1/3 cup of butter... but three little tablespoons. I rejoiced! (Or mostly, my stomach growled in approval.)

I was a little bit skeptical about using a mix of whole wheat and white flour, just because whole wheat sometimes makes things... not as delicious (compare a partially whole wheat flour pizza crust to an all-white flour crust, for instance). But I trusted my recipe in the end, and got ten beautiful scones because of it – scones you wouldn't have any idea were lightened up, because they tasted so good.

Plus, I got to drink the leftover, fresh-squeezed orange juice, which is always my favorite part. And, now I have something to eat tomorrow morning before my eight AM discussion section.