What Vegans Eat: Soup!

The time for iced drinks and cold soups has passed. At least it has in these parts where it's no longer unusual for me to spot frost on the neighbour's car as I hop on my bicycle to go to work in the morning. After having spent most of September with (and cooking for) a house guest, I seem to have gotten back into the habit of making slow-cooking tasty pots of warm goodness -- soups, stews and other improvised dishes. The timing is right with the seasons changing. The cats and I now end up spending a fair bit of time chatting each other up in the kitchen while I hover around the stove, adding a pinch of this or that and getting back into a routine of cooking from scratch that's more than I have in years.

Here are a few recipes for soups that some of my favourite food bloggers have been sharing recently or that I've dug up on their blogs or websites as I've looked around for new ideas:

I stocked up on coconut milk a few weeks ago when a local grocery store had an unbelievable sale. It made me particularly happy to find this recipe last week from Claire at Chez Cayenne for a Thai Tofu Noodle Soup that is absolutely delicious. I topped it off with the maximum two jalapeno peppers suggested as optional because I'm bent on upping my spice tolerance. I love a soup you can handle with chopsticks and this one really hit the spot!

Speaking of spices... Keri at I Eat Trees featured a recipe for a tomato-based slow cooker Fiesta Soup not long ago. Fragrant with chili powder and cilantro, it's uncomplicated to make with its mere handful of ingredients, most of which you might already have in your cupboards. I'll be testing this one out over the weekend, but have a hunch that it will be a keeper.

The prolific and ever-cheerful Jessy at happyveganface posted about a more soothing "comfort food" sort of soup her sweetie made for them recently. I love using butter beans / lima beans in soup since they do indeed cook up so incredibly creamy, so I look forward to trying out his Creamy Butter Bean-Potato-Kale Soup. In her post, she also links to a simple little Red Lentil Soup w/Lemon from another blog that sounds really easy to make (not to mention that it also sounds really yummy).

I've been enjoying the photos of her feline family shared by Renae at i eat food. She included some wonderful ones in her post a little over a month ago about her Roasted Tomato Lentil Soup. Check it out!

And then? Oh gosh, and then there's the Vegan Epicurean website, where I could spend hours sifting through the wide variety of recipes there. Some -- but not all -- of them are a bit more elaborate than what you'll find on most vegan food blogs, but trust me that the extra effort ends up worth it. Just yesterday, she posted a recipe for a Lightly Smoky Mushroom and Corn Soup in a Tomato Sage Broth that sounds so luscious. A little over a week ago, there was a Creme of Tomato and Brown Rice Soup that caught my eye. If you search the blog's archives, you can keep yourself in soup and stew for months, I swear. You'll find recipes for German Inspired Kale Soup with Whole Wheat Spaetzle, Shitake Mushroom and Barley Soup, Creamy Broccoli and Kale Soup, Italian Tomato and Onion Soup and so on.

If you have any favourite soup recipes from vegan food blogs you enjoy, please feel free to share them below. 'Tis the right time of year to curl up with a hot bowl with some crusty bread and I plan to indulge a lot in the coming much colder months.