Tuck in Thyme

At last!  The season for justified vegetating on the couch all day is here!  And thank god, because I've got some serious reading and movie-watching to catch up on.  I must say, I'm a bit relieved too that the spectacular, but let's admit it, rather fragile produce of the spring and summer is no longer around for us to exalt and make a fuss over.  (Full disclosure: I'll be exalting with the best of them come May.)  But now is the time for hardy fruits and veggies, like tubers and apples and pumpkins.  Good, wholesome, blue-collar vegetables that can sit in the produce bowl or in the crisper for a few weeks until you rediscover them.  And when you do discover them and cut off a few brown spots, you can throw them all in a pot and their flavors all come together unpretentiously to make a delicious soup.  Like so: 

This yummy concoction was born of no recipe at all, which is the great thing about veggie soup.  It's spontaneous, and it's a fabulous way to clean out the fridge.  This particular batch contains a russet potato (bought a couple weeks ago for breakfast burritos that never came to be), celery (purchased by Adam for some reason but never used), carrots (which are always sitting around), half an onion, a leek (the only ingredient bought special for the soup, for its flavor), garlic, a yam (not sure where that came from) and spinach (bought on sale a few days ago because it was old and ready to meet it's maker).  

The hardest part about it all is the cleaning, peeling, and chopping.  Luckily you don't need to be pretty about it.  Saute all the hard, dense veggies (in my case, everything but the spinach) for five or eight minutes in a big soup pot with some olive oil.  By the way, I'm noticing lately that recipes are telling me to wait a few minutes before adding the garlic to a saute.  I've tried it a couple times, and I think I like this new method-- it seems to prevent the garlic from burning.  While you're stirring the saute, mortar and pestle a few herbs that you like, such as thyme, oregano, salt, pepper, and toss in.

Pour stock, water, bouillion, or any combination thereof to cover.  Put a lid on the pot and just leave it alone for an hour or so.  Stir once in a while.  When the veggies were tender, I turned off the heat and stirred in the chopped spinach.  Season to taste with more s&p, a sprinkling of parmesan, or if you really want to get fancy, a dollop of pesto.

Instead of messing with pesto, I decided to focus on the other integral part of soup: the bread.  If all you've got in the house is sliced, storebought wheat and some oyster crackers then it's time to roll up your sleeves and fish out a packet of yeast from the fridge, where you have wisely stored it.  Then you can make some of this utterly delicious focaccia, whose recipe you can find here.  In the recipe, it tells you to make one "loaf" with thyme kneaded into it, and the other with parmesan sprinkled on top, which to me is sort of like eating a peanut butter sandwich one day and a jelly sandwich the next.  So I made BOTH loaves with thyme and parmesan and threw some sliced tomatoes on (before baking) to boot.

The hot soup and warm crusty/chewy focaccia were pure comfort, so delicious and homey that after dinner Adam and I immediately retreated to the couch to snuggle.  Not long after, the kids followed suit: