When life gives you leftovers...

... make slowcooker Thai soup!

Apparently, if you believe blogs, I haven't foraged anything for the past 4 1/2 years. It's high time to get cookin' again!

It's a week or so until payday and I don't want to fall down the rabbit hole of the nearest supermarket, where I would undoubtedly find far more to purchase than I went in for. The ingredients for today's dinner weren't exactly leftovers; let's just say that they weren't picked first for any playground games. Today was all about digging through the fridge, freezer, cupboards and garden ... and look what I found!

With the exception of the lime, these ingredients have been in our freezer (chicken breasts), fridge (veggie bouillon paste), cupboard (fish sauce ... don't look at the manufacture date) and spice shelf (red curry powder) for an unreasonably long time. Even the lime has been in the fridge crisper drawer for weeks. After sniffing at the fish sauce (seems okay) and shaking the curry powder to see if it releases any aroma at all (it does; smells good), I decided on Thai Chicken Soup in the Slowcooker. Nummy.

So. These ingredients were a good start, but I needed more. Out to the garden I went for a small stalk of lemon grass, one medium onion, and one large white carrot. The latter is not pretty, but it's fresh, nutritious and packed with flavor. Here they are, chopped up: onion peeled and thinly sliced; carrot washed, topped and tailed, and sliced about 1/4-inch thick. (By the way, I rarely peel carrots unless they're going to be eaten raw and haven't been surgically scrubbed.) The lemon grass, which I peeled, topped and tailed, and cut into 1-inch-long pieces, is supposed to be picked out of the soup before serving, but we'll see about that.

Into the crockpot I poured 2 cans of coconut milk, a large glob (couple of tablespoons' worth?) of bouillon paste, 2 T. of brown sugar, 2 heaping T. of peanut butter, 2 tiny cubes of frozen grated ginger (topped with freezer burn, the last of a little tray I bought sometime after the 2012 presidential election, so don't ask to see a photo), 1 or 2 cups of water, 2 T. of fish sauce, and 1 heaping T. of red curry powder. I would have preferred red curry paste, but it's either buried way back in the fridge or I finally did something with that giant tub I bought at a kitchen supply store a few years ago. I cut the lime in half and squeezed the juice of 1 half directly in the cooker, then threw in the squeezed lime half. Because, why not? (I will remove the lime half before serving.) I also added the chopped veggies pictured above.

I set the slowcooker on low and left everything to meld for a while. Meld, marry, or whatever cooking term du jour you prefer. The chicken breasts were still frozen, so, to conserve energy and speed the thawing process, I propped them on the warm slow cooker lid before slicing them crosswise into pieces about a half inch thick, once they'd softened.

Then I kicked the crockpot up to high; after all, I want to serve this soup for dinner today. Meanwhile, I ran back out to the garden for a head of baby bok choy. (See below. Aren't the plants pretty? Some of them have started going to seed, so we need to eat them soon.) I cut off the root end and sliced the entire head of bok choy crosswise into 1-inch-wide pieces. Those went into the slow cooker 30 minutes before serving time. I also checked a little raised bed box where we have mixed lettuces going for the fall and winter; peeking out between the lettuce plants are cilantro seedlings, and I planned to top the bowls of soup with a few of those just before serving (minus the dirty roots, needless to say). 

Side note: See the little light-green leaves behind the bok choy? Those are volunteer escarole seedlings, the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of plants I bought a year or so ago. Yippee! 

Second side note: See the little cilantro seedlings scattered amongst the lettuces? I snipped the leaves off a few of them and hope those seedlings generate new leaves fast enough to survive the mini harvest. 

Speaking of foraging, can you identify the sweet plant below? I'll give you 5 seconds: 1 Mississippi ... 2 Mississippi ... Did you say sweet potato? If so, you'd be correct! This little guy and another next to it are growing from a couple of sweet potatoes I found sprouting in a bowl in a dark corner of the kitchen counter. I could have tossed them to the chickens, and I'd have felt fine about that. However, I feel positively ecstatic about these lovely plants. I hope a crop of sweet potatoes follows in a few months. 

The grass-like seedlings to the left of the center plant are volunteer onions. These are the great, great, great-grandbabies of some onions we planted years ago, courtesy of our daughter.

During the last 30 minutes of crockpot time, I cooked rice on the stove; this will be the, ahem, vehicle for the soup. (We watch Chopped. The end.) The finished soup smells wonderful and looks even more appetizing with cilantro leaves scattered on top. You'd never know that some of the ingredients were ancient. :-) Incidentally, if you want to make a vegan version of this soup, you can substitute soy or tamari sauce for the fish sauce and tofu or a vegan meat substitute for the chicken. 

Errata: Next time I'll wait to add the lime juice until the end of cooking and serve the lime as cut wedges for everyone to add as desired. It seems to have broken the coconut milk, which makes sense. (You put the lime in the coconut ... but not at the start of cooking.)