Soup's On

I am unabashedly "a winter." In terms of fashion, winters are people with very dark or very light hair and pale skin who look good in jewel tones, which is true of me. But winter resonates with me in other ways too. Cold, quiet, solitary, brittle, desolate, radiant.

And, it's a good time to make soup. I love soup.

I've been playing around with the idea of a stock-based soup with grains, leafy greens and sausage for awhile. There are lots of similar recipes out there, and I'd been thinking of doing one for awhile, when yesterday's issue of Food Day provided basically the exact recipe that I was looking for. This one called for kielbasa instead of ground sausage, which was welcome. I used a turkey kielbasa for its low fat content. The leafy green in this soup is Kale. It has potatoes, pearl barley, Hungarian paprika, and a base of chicken stock.


You really can't eat a hearty soup like this without a good, crusty loaf of bread. This is a harvest wheat bread from Trader Joe's.

The stock of the soup was so flavorful, and this bread is a perfect vehicle for sopping up what's left after all the chunky and leafy bits are gone.

Hazel loves bread. Hazel thinks she loves kale too, but she doesn't. She'll pick it up and spit it out over and over, until you take it away from her. Bread gets inhaled, though.

The soup was extremely flavorful. It was also both filling and low in calories, which is awesome for my purposes. And yes, that is real butter on my bread. A little bit of real butter never hurt anyone.

Can you imagine a more perfect winter meal?