Dump Soup

After seven years of having a CSA box and several years of having a garden, there have been numerous occasions when we've let produce go bad!  Over the last couple of seasons, we've found that throwing the cookbook aside and letting intuition take over is sometimes the best way to utilize all the veggies or fruit that we  have on hand.

Tonight, in the wake of the CSA season officially starting, the mad scramble to clear out our freezer in order to make room for the bounties ahead began. We raided our freezer and dumped its remaining bags of produce into a pot along with some dried lentils and curry powder to make a "soup of the week" to get us through Friday.

Years of experience have shown us that the following items  help in getting the most out of  our produce. Our palette lends itself to ethnic cooking, so for us, these items are very useful for us to have on hand:

• dried lentils
• dried cooking beans (black, red, etc.)
• wild rice
• quinoa
• chili powder (including cayenne and ancho peppers)
• curry powder

Tonight, we "dumped" the following into a pot:

• four cups of frozen cherry tomatoes
• three cups of frozen green beans
• two cups of shredded overwintered parsnips
• three and a half cups of green lentils
• loads of curry powder (to our liking!)
• roughly seven-eight cups of vegetable broth and water 

A general rule of thumb is to add two cups of liquid for every cup of lentils.

The nutritional information for one cup of this fast food is below:

Nutrition Facts homemade soup - 5/11/10
Serving Size: 1 serving
Amount Per Serving
Calories	200
Total Fat	0.1g
Saturated Fat	0g
Trans Fat	0g
Cholesterol	0mg
Sodium	156mg
Carbohydrate	38.3g
Dietary Fiber	9.4g
Sugars	5.2g
Protein	13.3g
Vitamin A 11% Vitamin C 37% Calcium    7% Iron 20%

If you're a first time CSA member or gardener, or you're still wondering how you'll use all of the produce you have, we encourage you to let your cooking inhibitions go, and just begin throwing food in the pot!  Usually the results are not only tasty, but good for you!