When I finished my first cookbook challenge for the Yum & Yummer book by Greta Podleski (all recipes here), I told myself that I probably wouldn’t cook through another book. It was just a lot of work to organize all the recipes and be on such a consistent schedule of cooking, drafting and posting. It was a really fun experience though. After I finished that, I started my 1 item, 3 ways challenge, which was a different kind of process. It required more research because I had to think of ingredients then find all the recipes myself. It was still fun and I really liked the creativity.

But the day has come and I am announcing that I will be doing another cookbook challenge. I teased this in my montreal bagel post (link here) and I am excited to reveal my book choice. I will be using the Love Real Food cookbook by Kathryne Taylor (aka Cookie & Kate). It is a book of feel-good vegetarian recipes. I have been trying to eat less meat so this will be a nice help.

This book has over 100 recipes, but after going through page by page (to make my cooking schedule) I will be making 80+ recipes. I cut out the cocktails section as well as the “Extras”. If I make those, they will be part of another recipe instead of having their own post. I hope you will follow along for this new journey 🙂 let’s get started..

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I did randomly assign numbers to each recipe, but I may have chosen this one to be my first recipe. I didn’t want to wait to make this soup. It’s the first recipe I saw when I opened this book for the first time and it stuck in my head. I’m happy I made it because it was so delicious.

If you like thai peanut curry (which I do), this soup has some of the same flavours. It has super fragrant ginger and garlic and then creamy peanut butter and tomato paste to make a rich broth. I added about 1 tbsp sriracha at the end to add a nice kick and cut the richness a bit. I loved the taste from the first spoonful to the last.

Another thing I liked was that it was super hearty and nutritious. There were so many veggies – chickpeas, sweet potato, kale – that made this soup very filling and satisfying. It was a great meal. I also liked was how fast it came together. There was about 15 minutes of prep and then ~25 minutes cooking time total*, not bad for a weeknight dinner.

I am very pleased with this first recipe and I am looking forward to the next 80! 🙂

*I found my cooking time to be less than in the book because kale doesn’t take as much time to cook as collard greens. If you make this, just use your judgement and if it looks like everything is cooked down and tender, it’s ready to eat 🙂