Today's easy homemade soup recipe: Tomato soup made from scratch in just ten minutes. No "weird" ingredients like canned tomato soup and lower in calories, too. Skip Straight to the Recipe Is Tomato Soup Made from Canned Ingredients "Homemade"? So I suspect that purists won't consider this "homemade" soup. After all, I didn't till the soil to grow the tomatoes and I certainly didn't toil over a hot stove canning summer tomatoes, all to toss together an easy, steaming bowl of tomato soup during the cold and damp of a Midwestern winter. It Depends On the Ingredients. But here's why for me, Two-Can Ten-Minute Homemade Tomato Soup not only qualifies, it rocks. Let's look at the ingredient lists. Diced Tomatoes : Tomatoes.* Tomato Sauce : Tomato Concentrate, Salt, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Dried Bell Pepper.* * Caveat: It took careful examination of several labels to find diced tomatoes and toma

No recipe today but instead a story, one of Choice and Hope and Compromise. You'll find the story posted on Kitchen Parade, Why I Switched from Weight Watchers to Medifast . There's a lively discussion there, come join the chatter! A Veggie Venture is home of ' veggie evangelist ' Alanna Kellogg and the famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables . © Copyright Kitchen Parade 2013

Today's quick & easy way to roast one or two sweet peppers or hot chilies right on the stove, a gas stove, that is. To roast a pepper – the sweet peppers like green bell peppers, yellow and orange bell peppers and especially red bell peppers – is to change not only its texture but its flavor. A raw pepper is wet and crunchy, a roasted pepper is slippery and smoky. This same technique works not only with sweet peppers but also with hot chile peppers with a little or a lot of heat. My favorite pepper for roasting is a poblano chile (as picture) but I've also roasted jalapeños and other chiles. Mostly it's a hands-off operation, just throw the pepper on the fire, then carry on in the kitchen – no wandering off, now, it's not that hands-off! – keeping an eye on the roasting process, turning as needed. The technique is best for roasting one or two peppers, for a whole trayful, you'll want to follow this technique that works in both gas and electric ovens, Ho

The best vegetable recipes of 2012 from A Veggie Venture, just one per month, all in one handy spot for easy reference. It's that time of year, the week when we food bloggers look back over a year's worth of recipes and pick our favorites! I love-love-love this process! It really helps us hone our recipe collections, highlighting the best of the already very good, especially for sites like A Veggie Venture and my food column Kitchen Parade which by design, already post only really good recipes, the ones that work, the ones that are special or especially useful. (Here's the 2012 favorite recipes from Kitchen Parade too.) But I also love all the many sources of "best of the year" lists for movies, books, gadgets, etc. So this year, I'm collecting "best of the year" lists on Pinterest. Follow me there and you'll see all the new entries over the next couple of weeks on this board, Best of the Year Lists & Favorites . But okay, here you

Today's soup recipe: Easy, healthy and satisfying, a good way to kick off the new year (even a few days early!) after the indulgence of the holiday. Great for Meal Prep. Low Carb. Low Fat. Weight Watchers Friendly & Freestyle Friendly. Not just Vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free. And of course: dee-licious! So how did 2012 treat you? Mine was just swell , thanks for asking. (And yours? Do tell!) Should credit be given to this lovely little soup that I cooked up for New Years a year ago? Maybe! You see, by southern tradition, black-eyed peas bring "good fortune" to the new year and greens – any green, that's collard greens, turnip greens, kale, chard, etc – bring "financial success". And no bitter medicine, this soup. It really hits a sweet spot with just a tiny touch of underlying heat. It's a vegan soup, though no one will likely notice. On the other hand, a little ham or bacon wouldn't hurt here ( Note to Vegetarians ). Meat isn

Today's easy appetizer recipe, red and green for the holidays but fresh and festive for summer, too. Just one Weight Watchers point! Scramble mode, that's me just before a party's to start, that rush-rush hour or so when there will be exactly enough time to get everything done but not a minute, not a second, more. How does that happen anyway? But here's an appetizer I used to keep in my back pocket, just in case I really ran short of time and the appetizer I'd planned, more elegant but more fussy, just wasn't going to happen. But now I just put these out on purpose, because people like them. There's nothing unfamiliar or mysterious about this, you also can tell, hey, it looks fresh and healthy. So these just go, one by one, some people back for seconds and thirds, until the platter is empty. I hesitate to call this a recipe, really, it's more like a visual suggestion, an eyeball reminder. Buy a packet of those small party squares (I'm partial t

Today's extra-easy Thanksgiving vegetable recipe: An oh-so-smooth custardy corn pudding that takes all of ten minutes to throw together. Now don't turn up your nose that it starts with a can of creamed corn. The resulting custard is slightly sweet, oh-so-smooth that I promise, no one will know . Everyone will think you are a kitchen magician! Have you developed your own style, a personal preference for taste and timing? I sure have. When it's supper for one or two, my style is to make it fresh, eat it asap, no setting the slow cooker in the morning, no putting aside meals for the freezer. But for parties and family gatherings? I am the make-ahead queen . That's why virtually every single Thanksgiving recipe here on A Veggie Venture includes tips for making a dish the day before. Last year's Thanksgiving, I cooked and prepped so much on the Wednesday that by Thursday morning, all that was left was to "cook" was the turkey my grandmother's butterhorn