Cold Soup on a Hot Day

 

Today, it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Since we do not turn on our air conditioning until night, we eat our dinner in the heat. It is not so bad. We have been getting creative of what to eat on the hottest days. One satisfying cool meal we have found is soup. Cold soup. Half the fun was finding the recipe on the internet and the other half was making the soup.

Both soups we have tried so far are based entirely on vegetable ingredients. After a week or two of eating the two veggie soups everyday, our skin is glowing and, well, we both feel pretty darn good.

The first soup we tried was Gazpacho. This soup is from Spain and there are many recipes for it on the web. We took both of our tastes into consideration and used the following recipe from Allrecipes.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chef-johns-gazpacho/detail.aspx

I like that this recipe had a video with it. I followed the recipe exactly. However, I made the soup the night before to be sure it was very cold for dinner the next day. This soup lasted 3 days for the two of us. The best part was using peppers and basil from our garden.

 

The cold soup we had next was very different from Gazpacho. It was a cold beet soup. There were so many variations of this recipe and so many arguments on what it should be called that I went with the recipe that looked what my husband and I would like to eat. My husband loved this soup better than the Gazpacho, whereas I adored the Gazpacho. (Our unborn son, Alki, liked the Gazpacho better too.) Either way, both were very good and healthy.

I found this recipe on Allrecipes also. I did make a few changes to the recipe. I added chopped dill and cucumber to the soup. Also, instead of sour cream, I used Greek yogurt. Also, I did not grate the beets, but chopped them and then blended half the soup in the blender. My husband suggested that next time I do not blend it. He would prefer it chunky. This recipes lasted us for 2 days+.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/cold-russian-borscht/detail.aspx

Of course, we had to have a salad, bread, and I sliced some homemade tortillas filled with cold mashed chickpeas, cheese, tomato, and herbs. Plus, another filled with a cold omelet. Might as well live it up while you can, right?