Soup Chick®

In Harmony, a public library soup cook-off brings people together

Last week, seven local soup makers toted their slow cookers to our town's Harmony Library for the first-ever Soup Cook-Off. Despite the threat of snow, a large crowd turned out to taste the soups and vote for their favorite soup. I was one of the judges for the event, and I loved tasting each of the soups. The grand prize winning soup, made by a high school student (isn't that great?), Pepere's Pea Soup was the judges' favorite. It's a traditional comfort-food soup, a recipe passed down from grandfather to granddaughter, perfect for the slow cooker. I'll share the winner of the People's Choice Award here on Soup Chick in a couple of weeks.

Recipe for slow cooker vegan lentil and chickpea soup

While looking for inspiration in my pantry last week, I discovered a long-forgotten bag of small brown lentils, the kind you buy in bulk at Indian grocery stores. I had canned chickpeas on the shelf, too, and a vision of a brown-on-brown soup came to me. Cumin, garam masala, turmeric and cayenne pepper kept the soup in the same color palette, and some fresh cilantro added at the end provided contrast in both hue and taste. If you have a good strong mushroom or vegetable stock in your freezer, you can use that as the broth. And if you're not vegan, top the soup with a bit of yogurt when you serve.

Recipe for slow cooker tomato herb soup

My friend Marcia, who used to live up the road until she moved to New Mexico last year, shared a recipe for "spicy tomato soup" that she picked up in a soup workshop at the local food co-op. I couldn't figure out what was spicy about it, and I had herbs in the garden that needed to be trimmed, so her spicy soup morphed into my herby soup. Quick and easy in the slow cooker, this is a recipe for all seasons; I used canned diced tomatoes, but later in the summer I'll try it with garden-fresh tomatoes. Marcia, thanks for the inspiration!