A New Start

It has been a long month. Being laid off, packing up, and relocating from Vancouver to Calgary were some of the most challenging decisions I have ever had to make in my entire life. I do not think that I could have done it without my darling husband (DH from now on) by my side. DH was also laid off back in the summer, and we had been struggling with deciding what we were going to do financially to make things work.

In our ideal future, DH and I would like to have a large family, and I would stay at home as a stay-at-home mom. I am really looking forward to this, as we both believe that the best start we could provide for our children would be to have one of us be at home.

This blog is basically for me to chronicle our journey, and share some of my favourite crafts, activities, and recipes.

I'll start off with my favourite soup of all time! This one is taken from the Canadian Living website, just slightly modified:

Kale and Chickpea Soup
Ingredients
2 tbsp Extra-virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp ground sage
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste, I like to use very little salt in my cooking)
1/2 tsp pepper
3 cups sodium-reduced chicken broth + 1 cup water
1 cup sweet potato (the yellow-fleshed ones), diced
1 cup yams (the orange-fleshed ones), diced
1/2 cup potato, diced
1/2 cup carrots, diced finely
1 cup ham or other deli meat, diced (for this one, I ask the deli clerk to slice one 1/2 cm thick slice and I chop that up)
1 sweet red pepper, diced finely
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 cups chopped kale

Preparation
In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat; fry onion, sage, salt and pepper until onion starts to soften. At this point, at the garlic*. Add the carrot and fry until it starts to soften. Add in the potato, sweet potato, and yam shortly before the next step.
Add chicken broth, ham, red pepper, and chickpeas, and bring to a boil. Add water as necessary to maintain volume or taste**. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until potatoes are tender.
Add kale, simmer until tender.
Done!

*Tip of the day: Garlic burns easily, and once it burns, it does not taste good at all. I recommend adding it at lower heat or later in the spice stage.
** I find that because the deli meat has plenty of salt, this soup dilutes well and I actually prefer adding in water to taste to reduce the salt concentration.