Time got away from me earlier and Mark and I were hungry for lunch before I realized I should begin something. Mark suggested canned soup, as we have been trying to finish off a lot of our pantry in preparation for moving. The only canned soup we had left, in fact, was Thai Tom Kha coconut soup.
I have been trying to add more raw foods to our diet, and this definitely was not.
However, it looked like it could be a fairly good base–the ingredients were coconut milk, mushrooms, lemongrass [large stalks of it!], galangal, lime juice, fish sauce [so, not strictly vegetarian either], coriander, chillis, lime leaves, salt, and sugar. Not all things I normally would put in [we avoid sugar and salt around here, and I don't have any Thai fish sauce or galangal about] but close enough that I figure I could work something out.
It did not look as delicious in the bowl as I’d like–but then the processing to can it probably had a lot to do with that.
I grabbed a few carrots, some bell peppers, and broccoli and quickly mandolined them, coarsely chopping some of them for a different texture.
Tossed them into the soup, and voila, much more delicious and with some elements of raw nutrients.
I do have to say however, that this particular soup has a very different idea of ‘Lightly Hot & Sour’. Both Mark and I had to eat the soup exquisitely slowly due to all the hot pepper [with occasional interjections of "Agh! My throat is on fire!"], and we are no slouches when it comes to heat!