What's cooking?

So my new favorite thing is an immersion blender, you know, the electric stick thing that you stick in a pot and BRRZZZZZZZZRRRTTTTTT, and now your soup has a pleasant texture as opposed to the standard "broth with stuff floating in it." However, be sure not to pull the immersion blender out of the soup while it is still on, lest you end up taking a soup shower- and that's not a euphemism.

So the immersion blender and the winter weather (Southern hemisphere shout out!) have put me in the mood for soup. Here are two I've tried lately:

1. Moroccan sweet potato, carrot, and chickpea soup. Yummers!!

2. Tortilla Soup. I did change this one a bit since I wanted to share with my vegetarian flatmate. I subbed veggie broth and didn't add the chicken put put in some diced zucchini, corn, and kidney beans to bulk it up, and then I hit it with the immersion blender- not a full puree, just about a 50/50 mix. I also used tortilla chips instead of frying my own corn tortiallas, because who has time for that shit? Okay, so essentially what I cooked had little to do with the recipe, but it was really easy to make and tasted very good, especially with avocado and cheese and cilantro all over the top.

And to continue on the vegetarian kick, I had friends over for dinner recently and turned it into a parma party and ended up making Martha Stewart's Baked Eggplant Parmesan (I like how it has aubergine in parentheses, cause Martha's so European) in addition to this oven baked chicken parm. The eggplant was a little more work than the chicken but both came out well and made for a perfect winter dinner, served up with pasta, salad, garlic bread, and plenty of red wine.

Sorry, no photos this time around- you'll have to settle for my witty commentary.