The potato leek part is my older daughter’s favorite soup, and we make that quite often, and she prefers it without any milk or cream. Both kids love the novelty of having the green star in the middle, and they actually eat the spinach (swirling it with the soup to dilute the taste). I think the spinach purée alone makes a pretty tasty dairy-free “creamed spinach” side dish, but since I am the only one in the family who likes creamed spinach, I don’t make it unless I am making the soup.
If you don’t have a kosher for Passover cookie cutter, use a cup.
Potato Leek Soup
(makes 10 servings)
Ingredients
3 leeks
5 tbsp olive oil
2 pounds white potatoes, chopped
2 qts water
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup cream or milk (optional)
Cooking equipment
Cutting knife
Colander
Spatula
Measuring cup
Measuring spoon
Large pot
Cookie cutter or small plastic cup with the bottom cut off
Blender (stick blender works nicely)
To make the plain potato leek soup:
1. Discard tough part of green tops of leeks, then wash bottoms thoroughly
2. Cut leeks into thin slices and rinse in colander.
3. Cook in olive oil until leeks are soft – about 5 minutes.
4. Add potatoes and water and bring to a boil.
5. Lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until potatoes are soft.
6. Puree with a blender.
Add salt and pepper to taste. For a creamier variation, add ½ cup of cream or milk
Spinach Purée
1. Blanch 1 lb of baby spinach (Put in small colander and submerge briefly into boiling water until barely cooked. Then transfer to bowl of ice water.)
2. Drain spinach.
3. Puree with ¼ of batch of potato leek soup.
Assemble final soup by placing the cookie cutter in the bottom of a soup bowl. Spoon spinach puree into the cookie cutter to desired depth. Pour potato leek soup around cookie cutter to the same depth. Then remove cookie cutter and repeat in another bowl.
This article on peanut allergies inspired a lot of discussion on Facebook. Why are there so many peanut allergies among Americans and Brits and so few among native-born Israelis? The article only answers why so few among native-born Israelis (early exposure to peanuts). But the explosion of allergies elsewhere in the past ten years is still unanswered.
Patrick, the racer in my son’s four part film series, reaches Ruin Rui in this final episode. To see episodes I, II, and III, visit YouTube. This was one of the films featured in the Highland Park Teen Film Festival in early February. He also wrote a film that was produced by an eighth grader (my son is a seventh grader) with various teen actors and one librarian actress, but it is not (yet) online.
I’ve been spending a lot of time uploading videos; last week I set up a video for a client on a site not yet public, and today I uploaded two teen films to the Highland Park Public Library Teen Film page (Ite’s Adventure and Baby Troubles). There are a lot of details with converting films to the proper web format then getting them online without errors, especially if they are large files, which films often are.
My son tells me in this final episode the bowling pins are attacking Patrick the racer, but in the end he prevails. The scene takes place right next to my herb garden, which is currently still covered in snow, but the snow is melting.
You can see a full color version of this mosaic wall at Raritan Valley Community College in this post. To put this in sepia, I copied the original photo to a new layer in Photoshop, desaturated the photo, added yellow and red to get sepia, and then set the opacity of the sepia layer to 90% so just a wee bit of color would show through. I wanted to use the sepia effect to emphasize the textures of the mosaic.
cardinal in watercolor on paper
Yesterday, when it was warmer and almost spring-like, I saw many birds on my block, including a hawk flying low. Today there are big, white fluffy flakes coming day outside my window. By necessity (I need to pick my kids soon, early dismissal due to the weather), this will be a short post. Note the bill and the plume of the head (thanks, Michelle and Lorri).
On a related note, it is a custom to feed the birds the week of Parshat B’Shalach. Of course, the birds might want to be fed other weeks as well. Cardinals like sunflower seeds.
