The Conclusion: Creamy Cabbage and Carrot Soup

With this entry what I believe future historians will term the "Cabbaga Saga" comes to an end. Technically, this was not the last thing I ate from those cabbages but I felt that "I made dal normally and threw in some cabbage" would not be a very interesting blog entry. The impetus for this soup was the fact that I took several unopened packages of sour cream home that had accompanied some nachos at my friend's birthday party. Upon waking up and realizing I had no idea what to do with that sour cream, I looked through Mark Bittmans' book and settled on something from the creamy soups section.

Creamy Cabbage and Carrot Soup

oil

1 onion, minced

2 cups carrots, chopped

2 cups cabbage, chopped

salt

1 teaspoon chipotle chili powder

3 1/3 cups vegetable stock

1/3 cup sour cream
Heat the oil in a pot over medium. When hot, add the vegetables. Season with the salt and chipotle. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes, then add the stock and cook for another 15 minutes. Let cool and puree and put it in the blender. Stir in the sour cream and serve.

Serves 2

This is a nice unoffensive soup, but it's a little too boring for a main dish. So the serves 2 is a little misleading, it would be a great appitizer soup course before another course – or a breather in between more spicy dishes.

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess: My DR vacation

Gentle Readers, I have wronged you by being away too long. In my defense – I had vacation, then a short (but intense) term and then another vacation. I will try to stick to my "Sunday Frugal Sunday" schedule from now on.

Check the space below this entry for some posts I was working on but haven't published yet. In the meantime, here's a report from my vacation to the Dominican Republic.



I spent a week at an all-inclusive resort: $1000 (CDN) got you a roundtrip flight, shelter and the food you can eat and alcohol you can drink. I had a blast, though the days settled into a routine: wake up at noon, go to the beach for a bit, have lunch, go the pool (maybe play some volleyball or water polo), have supper, attend a charmingly amateur show the resort staff put on, hit up the Discoteca and then to a late night beach party or the 24 hour bar. While there are some interesting stories from some of these activities, as this is a food blog I'll describe the food.

The food was a bit of a change of pace for me: while there were veggie options there was certainly nothing frugal about the resort. One of the good things about the massive availability of alcohol was that it inhibited thinking through the political implications of so much waste in a country so poor (to say nothing of an island with such a recent catastrophe). I donated to Haiti again before I left. An indulgence, Martin Luther would sneer.

There were fairly massive quantities of food, I easily tripled my caloric intact for the week. Normally I have a sandwich for lunch and a plate of food for dinner. Here, I'd have a plate of food for lunch and probably two plates of food from the buffet for dinner. The ingredients were also different, I ate a lot of cheese. Generally, my meals followed the same pattern:



I'd have a slice of pizza, some fries, rice with some veggies and pasta with grilled vegetables over it (sometimes the pasta would have a cheese sauce). As you can see, there's nothing really Dominican about the food offerings. The food was, as one of my hipster friends would sniff, "unoffensive". It was good though, and sometimes something would genuinely surprise me. The guacamole was excellent, though I thought it was only served a few select occasions. Turns out it was there but I had been missing it. That was disappointing. Not as disappointing though as when I discovered – on the last night! – there was a vegetarian curried bean dish every night that, again, I had just overlooked. I also had some spiced potatoes that were amazing.

It's not the way I'd like to live for my entire life and it's certainly not the way I'd always like to eat. But it was fun for a week.