It has been very cold here in upstate New York lately and this creamy soup from the Nava Atlas’ Vegan Soups and Hearty Stews for All Seasons certainly hit the spot. Inspired again from my homework assignment by the Natural Kitchen Cooking School to make at least one recipe from Nava Atlas’ book from our “Soups and Stews” weekend coursework, I got to work on this one. Considering we received many root veggies such as parsnips, potatoes, and carrots in our CSA lately, it made perfect sense to use them up in this dish. To make it creamy, I used a combination of rice and soy milks and my handy, dandy immersion blender. If you don’t have an immersion blender yet, you must get one. In the words of Ferris Bueller, “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend you pick one up.”

Whenever I prepare a soup for dinner, I like to make some green side dish, whether it be a crisp salad or some sauteed greens. For tonight’s green, I sauteed some organic, local spinach from our CSA and topped it with the leftover Cashew Tamari Dressing from our recent Popcorn Tofu Hoagie feast. The recipe can be found in the Sunny Day in Texas (a vegan cookzine for charity). Buying the zine for the tofu and dressing recipes alone (courtesy of Wheatsville Co-op) is so worth it (not to mention you’d be helping out a great animal charity).

Overall, we’d rate this meal as 4 carrots out of 5 on the veganlicious scale!