Zucchini Corn Soup

The past week I've been lacking posts because I hit a cooking slump.  Last week I cooking daily and every meal was a failure.  Maybe I will still share those at some point, with notes on why I think the meals failed.  Today I had a yummy soup that I will give more details on below.

I still kept up with eating properly and just forced myself to eat the food I made, even if it wasn't particularly delicious.  I ate a lot of quinoa and asparagus and mushrooms and other veggies.

Avoiding the kids' Halloween candy hasn't been difficult.  I wasn't even tempted when a sweet boy remembered my favourite treat is a Reese's peanut butter cup and left one on my desk while I was sleeping.  It made me smile, but I didn't think twice about hiding it back in their stash.  I set myself up for success, though, by pre-purchasing plenty of chocolate that was vegan, gluten-free and fair-trade certified. 

Today I was browsing Pinterest and came across this link:  http://www.vegalicious.org/2008/07/07/mexican-zucchini-soup/

I wasn't interested in making the soup exactly like that recipe, but it did give me inspiration for making up my own soup.

I started by heating up a little grapeseed oil and olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat, and added chopped onions and minced garlic.

In soups my general policy is more onion is better, but these were my last onions, so I couldn't add as many as I would have liked.  After the onions were wilted, I added two cubes of organic, vegan, gluten free, vegetable bouillon, then added 6 cups of water and brought it all to a boil.  Next I chopped up 2 zucchini and added those to the pot.

I tossed in a handful of quinoa and 1-2 handfuls of arborio rice.  This would have been a good soup to add mushrooms to, but I was too lazy to rehydrate my exotic mushrooms and didn't have any fresh mushrooms on hand.

Everything was brought to a boil, then covered and turned down to simmer for about 30 minutes, until the rice and quinoa looked fully cooked.

For the last five minutes I added in organic, frozen corn niblets and a chopped tomato.  Along the way I also added spices, such as garlic salt and pepper.  After the corn and tomato looked a little cooked, I turned off the heat and served up a bowl immediately.

I ate it all.  >.>  It was yummy.

Last week I did make some amazing breaded mushrooms and I got to eat some before the dog ate the rest while I was at Zumba.  *sob*  I do want to share those, because they were a great success.  Here is a teaser of those.