'Twas the day before Christmas

It's the day before Christmas and I feel relaxed.  All of the festive events are over.  I no longer have to stress about making a dish or getting a gift for an event.  I don't have to worry about shopping for anything else because the Christmas budget is long gone.  Today, I can relax.  The only things I have to do are:  finish a Button Scarf that someone ordered and attend the Christmas Eve service tonight at church.

"Christmas" always stresses me out.  I've thought alot about that this year.  I've come to the conclusion that it's the busy-ness that stresses me out.  All of the parties and events and gatherings.  The gifts I have to buy for those events, the food I have to prepare.  All of that stresses me out.  And this year, money was so tight that wondering how I was going to buy the food for that dish or that extra gift (or, gas for the car so that we could make it to that event) was also stressing me out.  But those events are now over.  We made it to them.  Somehow, everything worked out.  Now, Christmas is almost here and it will be what it will be.  I look forward to the candlelight service tonight at church because, for me, that is Christmas.

Soon, I will have pictures to post, but not today.  I also have new items to add to my Etsy shop.  If you're interested, feel free to visit:  AngeliasKnitting.etsy.com

I wish you and your family a blessed Christmas.  If you don't celebrate Christmas, then I wish you & your family a blessed Sunday. 

Soup

Every Fall, I get this urge to make homemade soups.  I'm a vegetarian, so I rarely eat soup when I go out to eat (most soups either contain meat/poultry/seafood or are made with chicken stock).  Making my own soup is a way to be sure that I know what ingredients are used. 

The first soup I made this Fall is a Lentil Tomato soup.  I found the recipe in Taste of Home magazine (I think it may have been the November issue).  This soup is yummy - and easy to make. It's also pretty nutritious.  I followed the recipe.  The only "extra" thing I added was a little curry (I made the curry & keep it on hand).  Oh!  I also added kale.  I'm on a mission to eat more kale.  This soup is hearty & the curry gives it a nice, slow heat.

This week, I decided to make two soups.  I made the Lentil Tomato again.  I also made the Yarn Harlot's Emergency Soup.  This is another simple, hearty, oh-so-yummy soup.  It contains carrots, potatoes, leeks, garlic and chickpeas.  I don't love chickpeas by themselves - it's a texture thing.  But in this soup?  LOVE them!  I used a hand-held blender to blend some of the soup.  This made it look like a cream-based soup (but there's no cream in it).  It also helped to make it nice & thick.

I have been taking soup to work for lunch every day this week.  This is a great thing.  It means that I don't buy lunch.  It also means that I eat a healthy lunch.  I know that I feel better when I eat healthy, it's just that it's too easy sometimes to buy lunch from someplace.  That's when I end up eating things like cheese fries.

Now I'm craving root vegetables.  I think my next soup will be Roasted Root Vegetable Ital Stew from Bryant Terry's book, Vegan Soul Kitchen.  I love this book!  There are stories and suggested music to listen to while you're preparing the food.  And, the book offers Soul Food without the meat and all of the animal fat that Soul Food usually contains.  I read through the book and get so hungry and want to make so many recipes (even if I've just eaten).