Raise your hand if you think you are getting enough veggies and whole grains in your diet?  Anybody?  Seeing no hands, I’m going to assume that we could all use more veggies and whole grains in our diet.  Doesn’t that seem to be the mantra of the health food movement lately?  Eat more vegetables.  Eat more whole grains.  This super simple, delicious soup is the perfect answer to that seemingly hefty requirement.

Advertising this soup as the Healthiest Thing You Will Eat This Week does it a disservice.  It also happens to be creamy, chewy, filling and perfectly delicious.  It’s the kind of soup you would order at a restaurant, fall in love with immediately, tell all your friends about and then drive twenty-minutes out of your way to pick up on the way home for dinner one night.  It’s that good.

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Folks, I owe you an apology.  An apology for leaving you hanging for the past few months, for leaving you stranded during the biggest cooking season of the year (gulp), for leaving you wondering what was to become of A Dash of Sass.  I don’t have a good excuse, but a simple explanation: Life! I know I’ve mentioned it before, but being a Grown Up is way harder than it looks!  The balancing act of keeping your head above water at an intense job that mandates long, stressful hours, keeping a kitchen stocked with fresh, healthy ingredients (and doing enough menu planning to actually cook all those fresh ingredients!), staying in touch with friends and family strewn across the country, getting enough sleep and exercise … well, geeze, sometimes it feels like treading water is the best you can do!

I have no idea what happened to the last four months, just vague memories of brief moments of clarity.  So what does one eat while trying to keep pace with this hectic life without resorting to yucky, processed nastiness frequently referred to as fast “food”?  Quinoa.  Lots and lots of quinoa.  Meet my new favorite all-purpose grain.  It cooks up in no time at all, takes on the flavors of whatever else you are cooking with, is high in protein and a perfect way to get plenty of whole grains!

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Quick — Name the number one preconceived notion about turkey burgers … 3 … 2 … 1 … you said they are dry and have no flavor, right?  This ingenious recipe from Cook Yourself Thin is going to convert you into a lifetime turkey burger lover.  I promise.  I was never a big turkey burger fan because they generally tasted like dried out sawdust.  This recipe incorporates diced green chilies in the burgers which not only keep the burgers profoundly moist (even if you over cook them!) and but also give them a flavorful kick in the behind!

No joke, I’ve eaten these burgers three times in the last two weeks.  They are just that good!  When I was asked to whip up a recipe for an interview segment on WithJosh.com, these turkey burgers were the first thing that came to mind.  Yes, you read that right … an interview segment!  My first interview!  Cooking up the burgers was a blast and the best part was that we got to eat all the leftovers.

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Italian food intimidates me.  I’ve heard the stories about Italian women spending entire days making sauce and unspoken recipes with no actual measurements. This scares me.  I didn’t grow up eating a lot of pasta and as a result never developed much of a taste for it.  But I’m well aware that the rest of the world is rather fond of it.  I’ve heard all the campaigns: It’s so easy! It’s so versatile! It’s so delicious!

These social pressures have, in fact, led me to obsessively keep a box of dry pasta in my pantry out of the fear that I will have an unexpected guest show up who wants pasta for dinner.  Now, this same box has moved with me to at least three different apartments.  As it turns out, people don’t frequently show up at my house demanding pasta.  Nonetheless, I’ve always been terrified that someone will ask for pasta and I won’t know how to cook it! Oh the embarrassment! Can you imagine? You can’t cook pasta!?!?! For shame!

They always say “But it’s so easy!  Just boil water and throw in the pasta!”  I didn’t believe them.  I was certain there was something they weren’t telling me.  Then they would toss around words like al dente and I’d be done for!!  But I had a revelation.  Thanks to Giada.

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Having never worked with leeks, I was always so intrigued to hear them described as “creamy” on cooking shows (ok, mostly Top Chef).  How can an over-sized scallion be creamy?  It seems counter intuitive, against nature, and frankly, unbelievable.  Thoroughly intrigued nonetheless, I began inspecting leek recipes for one to sufficiently spark my interest.  As someone who doesn’t eat a lot of cream-based soups, the idea of using this allegedly creamy vegetable to achieve a smooth soup base was very appealing.  Plus, I’ve been dying to try out the new immersion blender my boyfriend just bought me!

The most common pairing I came across was leeks and potatoes.  I generally try to avoid potatoes (they aren’t South Beach friendly!) and I wasn’t happy at the idea of wasting these creamy leeks in a mess of pureed potatoes.  After reviewing a couple different leek soup recipes, I decided to venture out on my own.  The resulting creating is a hybrid of a couple different recipes, with my own added twist.  I’m proud to report that the result was utterly delicious!!

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We are major mushroom fans.  Sauteed mushrooms, stuffed mushrooms, sliced mushrooms all make frequent appearances in the kitchen.  It’s been so cold lately that I’ve been looking for more soup recipes and when I saw Kalyn’s Double Mushroom Soup I knew it would only be a matter weeks before I was making it myself.

The trickiest part was locating the dried mushrooms. Not a single employee at our decent-sized grocery store could say whether they carried dried mushrooms and if they did where they would be located. Luckily, I have an extremely patient boyfriend who searched high and low until finding a box of dried porcini mushrooms.  I had never worked with dried mushrooms before but was pleasantly surprised to find that the rehydration process was painless and they added a nice extra mushroom-y dimension to the soup.

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