Carrot Soup with Roasted Peppers

When I got home today, I found my husband in a foul disposition, for good reason.  To begin my story:  This past week, Alaskan Salmon was on sale, $4.99/lb whole fish.  Amazing deal right? So I bought a fish, weighing in at over 5 pounds.  It was frozen when I purchased it, because they ran out of the thawed fish so quickly.  So it has been thawing in my fridge since Saturday, well over four days.  Well, my fish leaked, fish juice all over my beautiful veggies in the drawer (luckily, they were all in bags, but still.  Precautions must be taken).  So now I need to cook them.  I had over three pounds of baby carrots, almost a full bunch of celery, four bell peppers and my wonderfully large Costco bag of peeled garlic.  What is a girl to do?  Since I had the most carrots, I thought a soup would be good.  So, as we speak, I'm cooking up a wonderful batch of roasted pepper and carrot soup.  Doesn't that sound good?

Roasted peppers out of the oven

To roast the red peppers, you need to halve them and take out the seeds.  Take a baking sheet and line it with foil (I only do this so that I don't have to clean it up after). Spray it with some cooking oil (I used canola) and place them cut side down on the foil.  Your oven should be heated to 450,  cook them for approximately 30 minutes, turning them halfway through, until they start to char on the skin.  When you bring them out, allow them to sweat by covering them for about 10 minutes.  This makes the skin easier to take off, you can peel the skin either by hand or with a paring knife.  Once you have done that, dice them and set them aside.

Peeled roasted peppers

What you will need: 

1 medium onion, chopped

10 (or less) cloves, peeled and diced garlic

3-5 lbs Carrots (baby or regular), chopped

1/2 bunch celery, chopped

4 bell peppers, halved and seeds cleaned out

6 1/4 cup water

1 teaspoon (or two cubes) vegetable bouillon

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 bay leaves

1 Tablespoon minced ginger

While your peppers are cooking, you can begin the soup.  I chopped up all of my carrots, celery and the garlic.  I love garlic, so by all means, feel free to use less.  I took an onion and chopped that up too.  

• Heat up about two teaspoons of oil in a tall pot.  I used olive oil but you can use butter or canola, which ever you have on hand.  Place the onions and garlic in the pot after it has heated and simmer until they start to brown a little.  
• Add your carrots then celery and about two teaspoons of kosher salt.  Stir around for a few minutes, the moisture will have left the pan, so add a little water into the pan, about 1/4 cup so that you don't burn your veggies.  Simmer for about  5-10 minutes.  
• Add about 4 cups of water to the pot.  I also took a heaping teaspoon of vegetable bouillon and added it to two cups of hot water to liquify, add to the pot.  
• Throw in about two teaspoons of kosher salt, ground black pepper, minced ginger, and the bay leaves.
• Simmer on medium low for approximately 1.5-2 hours or until the carrots are tender enough to smash with a fork
• When your peppers are done, add them to the pot to, to mix and mingle with the soup

The soup is thick, so if you want it thinner, add some more water or broth to thin it out.  Once the carrots are tender enough, remove the soup from heat and blend it in a blender or food processor.  Serve hot or chilled with a dollop of sour cream.  You could even sprinkle some croutons on top or serve with some warm crusty bread.  It's so good! 

Fat Free Veggie / Cracker dip

My family loves veggie dips, but we do not want to incorporate all of the extra fat and oils that can be included in store bought dips.  For this reason, it forced me to come up with a really good base dip for veggies and crackers.  Once you make the base, you can add anything else you want to customize this and make it your own.

The base:
1 package Fat Free cream cheese
1 small tub (16 oz) of Fat Free sour cream (Nonfat Greek Yogurt works too)
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp dill
3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

Mix it all together.  I use my Kitchen Aid with the paddle attachment.  This makes it nice and creamy.

Here's a short side note story.  I recently purchased one of those huge bags of peeled garlic from Costco, but I never seem to use it all before it goes bad.  Well, I found a site that tells me how to pickle my garlic cloves in the fridge and I did this weeks ago.  The point of my rambling, is that I used some of this pickled garlic and the vinegar with it and made a FANTASTIC garlic dip.

On to the extras.  As I stated above, you can add most anything to the dip and make it your own.
In my pictured dip:
4 cloves pickled garlic (plus 2 Tbsp of the vinegar)
1/4 tsp dried Thyme
1/8 tsp ground Sage
1/8 tsp ground Ginger
1 tsp chopped dried red onion
1/2 tsp chopped chives
1/2 tsp chopped parsley


If you want to make this more like a dressing for salads, you can thin it out with milk to the consistency you desire. I've also been known to add shredded carrots and cucumbers to the mix if it's meant more as a spread for crackers or sandwiches.

If you are interested in other preserving methods for garlic, here is the site I found.  The refrigerated garlic is at the bottom of the site: Preserving Garlic