Raise your hand if you’ve already failed at your New Year’s healthy-eating resolutions. Both of mine are raised high. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if New Year’s resolutions were made in July, when produce is in season and it’s actually warm enough out that a salad doesn’t seem like punishment?

In winter, soup is my healthy eating secret weapon. Butternut squash bisque is warm, comforting, and nutritious. The soup itself it dairy free, but topping it with Maple Whipped Cream adds an elegant touch and the perfect hint of sweetness. You can add as little or as much as you want, depending on your diet goals that day.

To make this butternut squash bisque, start by roasting the squash and shallot to intensify their flavor. Once the vegetables are roasted, transfer the vegetables to your blender and puree it with apple cider and vegetable stock to thin it out.

I love using premade vegetable stock, since it’s an easy way to add a goof layer of base flavor without having to go through the effort of chopping carrots and celery yourself. It also shaves off a ton of cooking time, since the flavors don’t need as much coaxing in order to fully develop.

 

One the soup is the consistency you like, transfer it to a pot and heat it through. If you have a high-speed blender, like a Vitamix, you can also just crank it up to high and let it heat the soup the rest of the way for you.

The maple whipped cream is just as easy to make – I do it right in my blender while the squash is roasting. Just add the cream and a drizzle of maple syrup, the pulse several times until whipped. It will hold in the refrigerator for several hours.

If you have any soup leftover, just swirl the leftover whipped cream into it and let it melt. It won’t be quite as fun, but it will be just as delicious.

Here are a few other butternut squash recipes you might enjoy: Vanilla Roasted Butternut Squash and Pecans, Butternut Squash Tartines, and Roasted Butternut and Pomegranate Salad.

This Butternut Squash Bisque recipe first appeared on Food Fanatic, where I’m the soup expert.

It’s time for another edition of Progressive Eats, a virtual dinner party where we share recipes following a themed menu. This month I’m hosting, which meant I got to pick the theme! Of course, I picked my absolute favorite thing to eat: soup!

I’m so excited for this menu. In addition to a bunch of soups that look amazing, we’re having salad, rolls (what good is a bowl of soup without some freshly baked bread?) and even some dessert soup shooters. This is definitely a dinner party I’d be happy to attend in person.

This Irish lamb soup with barley and turnips is inspired by the Irish lamb stew in this month’s issue of Food+Wine magazine. I saw it this past weekend and immediately had to change my dinner plans to make room for this soup since it sounded so good!

I made my soup more brothy than the original stew and added some barley to make it a more filling meal. I also stirred in some fresh lemon juice at the end to add some brightness. If you have them, this soup would be delicious with a few parsnips added in with the carrots. I planned to add them to my pot, but forgot that I had used them all up last week when I made roast sausage with apples and parsnips.

This soup keeps well and the flavor actually improves after a nigh in the refrigerator. I made it over the weekend and reheated it for a simple weeknight meal.

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Irish Lamb and Barley Soup with Turnips

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 45 minutes minutes

Servings 8

Author Lauren Keating

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 pound boneless lamb shoulder trimmed + cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 onion chopped
• 4 garlic cloves crushed
• 2 tablespoons flour
• ½ cup red wine
• 4 cups low-sodium chicken stock
• 4 cups water
• 3 turnips peeled and chopped
• 3 thin-skinned potatoes such as Yukon Gold, chopped
• 4 carrots peeled and cut into rounds
• ½ cup pearled barley
• 1 small bunch parsley chopped
• 1 lemon juiced

Instructions

• Heat the oil in a large soup pot set over medium-high heat. Season the lamb with salt and pepper. Working in batches if needed, cook the lamb until browned, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Add the onions to the pot and cook until soft and golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes. Transfer to the plate with the lamb.
• Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the flour. Return the pot to the stove and add the wine. Stir until smooth, scraping up any browned bits that have cooked onto the bottom of the pot. Whisk in the stock and water. Add the lamb and onions and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook 1 hour.
• Add the turnips, potatoes, and carrots. Simmer for 30 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.
• Meanwhile, bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add the barley and cook 30 minutes, or until soft. Drain and add to the soup.
• Just before serving, stir in the lemon juice and parsley. Season with salt and pepper.

Notes

Adapted from Food+Wine, March 2015

Soups On!

Soups

Lamb and Barley Soup from Healthy Delicious
Sausage, Pepper and Bean Soup from That Skinny Chick Can Bake
Creole Black Eyed Pea Soup from Never Enough Thyme
Old Fashioned Chicken Soup with Dumplings from Creative Culinary
Watercress and Buttermilk Vichysoisse from The Wimpy Vegetarian
Pressure Cooker Chorizo Chicken and Kale Soup from Pressure Cooking Today
Rhode Island Clam Chowder from girlichef

Salads

Quinoa Beet Kale Apple Walnut Goat Cheese Salad from Jeanette’s Healthy Living
Gado Gado – Indonesian Vegetable Salad from Spice Roots
Buttermilk Herb Rolls from Stetted
Gluten-Free Corn Muffins with Jalapeno and Cheese from The Heritage Cook

Dessert

Berry Soup Dessert Shooters from Miss in the Kitchen

Welcome to Progressive Eats, our virtual version of a Progressive Dinner Party. This month’s theme is Soup’s On! and is hosted by Lauren Keating who blogs at Healthy. Delicious. Need some warming up? We can help!

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a progressive dinner involves going from house to house, enjoying a different course at each location. With Progressive Eats, a theme is chosen each month, members share recipes suitable for a delicious meal or party, and you can hop from blog to blog to check them out.

We have a core group of 12 bloggers, but we will always need substitutes and if there is enough interest would consider additional groups. To see our upcoming themes and how you can participate, please check out the schedule at Creative Culinary or contact Barb for more information.

I hope you all like soup as much as I do, because I’ll be sharing a ton of new soup recipes this year! Not just because it’s unacceptably cold outside, but because I’ve signed on as a contributor to the Food Fanatic web site. I’m the new “soup fanatic” and I’ll be creating two new soup recipes for them every month. And I get to share them here, too! I might not post every single one here on Healthy Delicious, but I’ll definitely share my favorites.

Soup fanatic or not, I’d probably be sharing a soup recipe right now anyway. It was 47-degrees inside my house when I woke up the other morning. If I disappear suddenly, it’s probably because I couldn’t take anymore and up and moved to a tropical island someplace. All I want to do is curl up with a bowl of chowder or creamy potato soup to keep me warm.

Loaded baked potato soup usually seems like a good idea at the time, I almost always end up regretting it: it’s so heavy and creamy that it zaps all of my energy and leaves me with a stomachache. Luckily, I have a few tricks up my sleeve for a lighter loaded baked potato soup without the heaviness of traditional recipes. This way, I get to enjoy my soup and the rest of the day, too!

First, I use white potatoes instead of the more common russets. White potatoes have a medium level of starch and a smooth, creamy texture that blends up beautifully without the addition of milk or cream. Since their skins are very thin, you can blend them right into the soup for extra nutrition (plus who ever feels like peeling potatoes anyway?)

Instead of using all potatoes, I blend in some cauliflower. Cauliflower has a mild flavor that is almost unnoticeable after it’s blended in with the potatoes, and it keeps the soup from becoming too dense. I’ve found that using a 2:1 ratio of potatoes to cauliflower results in the best flavor. You can tell it’s there if you’re paying attention, but this is definitely still potato soup! (If you’re looking for a pure cauliflower soup, try this creamy cauliflower soup with piri piri shrimp.)

I love sour cream on my baked potatoes, and a dollop of Greek yogurt in this soup adds a similar tanginess while also helping to bring the flavors of the soup together.

Top the potato soup with plenty of scallions, extra-sharp cheddar cheese, and crumbled bacon. When I’m in the mood for something a little spicier, I also love to add a few drops of hot sauce.

274 calories, 8 grams fat, 34 grams carbohydrates, 6 grams fiber, 12 grams protein, 6 Points+.

You can also see my Lighter Loaded Baked Potato Soup Recipe on Food Fanatic.

Like most of the country, New York has been suffering through a heat wave for the past week. Quite frankly, it’s too hot to cook or even to eat anything very substantial. For the first few days I was content eating salads for dinner, but after more than two or three days of salad I start to get cranky so I tried to think of something that would satisfy my raving for real food without requiring me to actually cook (since the 5 minutes I spent over the stove sautéing onions last night left me so hot that I couldn’t even enjoy the steak that Shawn grilled for me).

An ice-cold gazpacho seemed like it would hit the spot, but that suggestion was met with a resounding, “No way!” My effort to convince Shawn that gazpacho is basically just pureed salsa (the only way he’ll eat raw tomatoes) didn’t get me anywhere. Luckily, I had this recipe up my sleeve — a sightly spicy watermelon soup without a single tomato.

Loaded with cucumber and yellow bell pepper and enriched with an almond-cilantro pesto, this gazpacho doesn’t have the cloying sweetness of so many other fruit-based soups — you definitely won’t mistake it for dessert! Requiring little more than a blender and a refrigerator, it’s the perfect way to beat the summer heat. Serve it with a side of store-bought breadsticks for a satisfying dinner that even the staunchest tomato-hater will love.

This gazpacho is delicious on its own, but if you want to go crazy add a dash of angostura bitters or sherry peppers sauce to your bowl. You’ll be glad you did! It adds an extra dimension of flavor that takes this soup from great to out-of-this-world.

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Watermelon Gazpacho

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Additional Time 1 hour hour

Total Time 1 hour hour 15 minutes minutes

Servings 4

Author Lauren Keating

Ingredients

• 3 pound Watermelon peeled and cut into 1-2 inch cubes
• 1 Cucumber peeled and chopped
• 1 Yellow Bell Pepper seeded
• ¼ cup fresh Cilantro
• 12 raw/unroasted Almonds

Almonds

• 1 Jalapeno roughly chopped
• 1 Tbs. Olive Oil

Olive Oil

• 1 Lime juiced
• Black Pepper to taste
• Bitters or Sherry Peppers Sauce plus additional watermelon for garnish if desired

Instructions

• Add the watermelon and cucumber to a food processor or blender, working in batches if needed. Blend until smooth — about 30 seconds in a food processor.
• Set a mesh strainer over a large bowl. Pour the watermelon and cucumber puree through the strainer to remove the seeds. Press down gently to extract as much liquid as possible — don’t worry if some pulp seeps through.
• Add the pepper, cilantro, almonds, jalapeno, and about 1 cup of your strained liquid back into the food processor/blender. Blend until a smooth pesto forms — about 1 minute. Stir the pesto into the reserved soup base. Whisk in the olive oil and lime juice.  Season with black pepper.
• Chill at least 1 hour or until ready to serve.
• If desired, garnish with additional diced watermelon and chopped cilantro. Allow each diner to season their bowl with bitters or sherry peppers sauce.