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It wasn’t hard to pick the first recipe to be featured on my updated blog! This is my favourite for 4 reasons:
- It’s crazy delicious
- Its’s crazy healthy
- When made in the summer or beginning of fall I was able to use 100% organic ingredients from local farmers.
- It’s vegan
I could talk way more about where I sourced my ingredients, why I love that it’s vegan… or even where I got my table cloth from. But, scrolling down for 75 minutes on a blog page just to find a recipe is super annoying so instead I’m just going to leave this here. You’re welcome.
Ingredients
- 1 tetra pack container of veggie broth (or make your own!)
- 3-4 medium beets, peeled and shredded or sliced
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and shredded or sliced
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 3 stocks of celery
- 3-4 stocks of shredded kale (alter amount to your preference)
- 2 tablespoons of high quality olive oil (I use a garlic infused olive oil for extra flavour)
- 1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste (or use fresh tomatoes)
- Fresh dill and parsley and lovage to taste
- 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar or 1 lemon squeezed.
- 2 cups of cooked quinoa (You can cook it in your soup if you are prepared to watch it.)
Instructions
- Empty your veggie broth into a large stock pot
- Add olive oil, garlic, beets, carrots, kale, onion and cabbage. Traditionally these ingredients would be shredded using a vegetable grater but I love my soup chunky so I slice and dice’em up. Set the pot to boil. The broth will turn a rich beautiful shade of magenta!
- Add in your tomatoes and/or tomato paste (I like to use both) sugar and your choice of acid.
- When the soup is almost done cooking, through in the quinoa, herbs and spices.
- Using a fork spear the carrots and beets to judge when the soup is done cooking (usually about 20 minutes on low/medium for me) when the veggies are soft your soup is done.
- Serve with dollop of plain greek yogurt or cashew cream yogurt on top if you like your borscht creamy and dip in some fresh sour dough to really kick up the meal and carb count.
OK, now that you have the recipe, here are some extra details on why this soup is so amazing. All my veggies from this dish came from the Feather and Hill Farm CSA that I participate in, and the herbs came from The Northern Table. Both of these are local Edmonton farmers that practice ethical and sustainable farming, put a whole lot of love into their gardens and are run by lovely people!
I store this soup in mason jars which are perfect to throw in the lunch bag or freezer, just be sure to leave room if you are going to freeze! This soup can sit in your fridge for a week.
So, why vegan? I, my self am not a Vegan, though I am a vegetarian and strive to replace most of the animal products in my house with awesome plant based alternatives. I do this for a few reasons. First, I want to be part of the solution to our climate crisis. Industrialized cattle farming is the number one cause of deforestation in the amazon and continues to be a climate change factor globally. For this reason, I buy ethically raised meat from farmers here in Edmonton, (like elk from Feather and Hill) for the meat eaters in my home.
Second, because being plant based means we eat a lot more veggies, more nutrients and less cholesterol. That being said I offer my kids a variety of protein sources. I understand that red meat is the most bio-ready source of iron so I make sure their aversions to green things doesn’t affect their health.
Finally, I choose not to eat mammals and poultry, because well, I don’t like to kill things. But, I totally respect that there is a huge spectrum of thoughts and beliefs here, and as long as we are thinking about where we all get our food from and who or what is affected by that, I’m happy!
If you have read this far, you are probably one of my friends or my mom and have been silently judging my grammar this whole time, but either way thank you for reading and much love!