cheap eats [ginger carrot soup]

I'm being uber healthy this week, since I'll be eating/dancing my face off at a wedding this weekend, then heading to Honduras for a week-long vacation (gotta save room for the banana donut guy...who walks up and down the beach selling them...and is listed as "attraction #7 of 19" on Trip Advisor for Honduras. Awesome).

With that, I'm eating all fruits, veggies, and nuts/seeds this week. If I can, I love to do all smoothies, but 1. that's a LOT of cold for one day and 2. it's hard to bring a Vitamix to work, and I only like 'em fresh. I'm spoiled. Soup is a wonderful solution to my two issues, and it isn't tough to find vegan  recipes. I followed this one from Vitamix almost exactly for a gingery, carroty, orangey delight. Really it's delicious, and we had a pound of baby carrots and three sad looking oranges that needed to be eaten, so it was also an opportunity to clean out the fridge. Win-win.

In my searching, I found that a basic ratio is 1 lb (4 cups) of a starchy vegetable, one large or two small onions (or replace entirely with cucumbers), 2-4 cups liquid, and spices of your choice will yield a great vegetable puree. Having an outline lets you play with flavors you like. I wanted to batch cook, so I tried a sweet potato, onion, coconut water and curry puree too, which was delicious (kinda followed this recipe, but used less curry powder). I'm thinking watermelon, cucumber, coconut water, and mint soup sounds good for summer. Broccoli makes a good soup base, as does butternut squash. So many possibilities!