Soupe Au Pistou

So, so, so excited to be participating! What fun to make a recipe you've never tried before once a week and write about how delicious and beautiful your results were! Not to mention to celebrate the movie and the books and the work of Julia Child. What a genius she was!

Here's my contribution for Week 1: Soupe Au Pistou (Provencal Vegetable Soup with Garlic, Basil and Herbs, p. 45)

So, you noticed the crock pot.

Okay, I sorta cheated a little bit on the recipe. For the first 5 ingrediets, water, carrots, potatoes, leeks and salt, the recipe said to boil them slowly for about 40 minutes. I knew I didn't have the time yesterday evening to do that, so I put them in the crock pot on low while I was at work. When I got home, I added the rest of the ingredients and followed the recipe, and Volia! -- it turned out wonderful!

I have to admit, I doubted it would turn out so wonderful as I was putting the soup together. I couldn't quite get my tomatoe puree, basil and garlic to blend to a "paste" per se, but that didn't seem to affect the soup's consistency. And, I used velvet-leaf basil instead of sweet basil, because that's what I had on hand. The leaves are a bit more coarse, hence the name, "velvet-leaf basil", and you can kinda tell when you eat it. But it is still yummy, and virtually fat free, which is a plus...

I happend to have all the ingredients on hand (except leeks, which I had to run out a buy), which pretty much dictated what I decided to make this week, as I am still in the Penny Pinching Pantry Raid challenge. This soup was so hearty and filling, it would be great for a winter supper, and since I know now that you can do the most time-consuming part of the recipe in the crockpot, this will likely become part of my usual rotation.


Next week, I'm off to Myrtle Beach for a week with my mom and brother. We always pick a few nights to stay in a cook something at the condo, so I already picked out a recipe from MtAoFC, that only takes a few ingredients and isn't too difficult to make, since I'll be at the mercy of a kitchen and implements I'm not familiar with.



When I first heard a movie was in the works based on the book, Julie & Julia, I was so excited because last fall, I'd read the book. After I read that book, I read My Life in France, which is the other book the movie incorporates. I hate to admit that I didn't finish that one. I stopped reading shortly after Julia and Paul Child moved to Germany. It got sorta slow at that point, but I'm sure Julia herself would admit as much. She was so disappointed to be leaving France after living there for a few years. I enjoyed reading the books so much, I asked for MtAoFC for Christmas and got it. I've only made a handful of recipes out of the book, but the one's I've made have been F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!


So maybe next Friday I'll go see the movie. Seems like we always go to the movies when we are at the beach. A werid thing my family does, evidently. At any rate, I'm already looking forward to leftover soup for lunch today, and next week's recipe. Stay tuned!