Table Talk » Cook with What You Have Challenge - Days 7 & 8 Veggie Broth, Potato Soup, Black Rice Curried Meatloaf

Saturday was day 7 of my Cook with What You Have Challenge. I started the day making Baked Oatmeal, then shopped for vegetables and dairy. Potatoes seem to be multiplying in my pantry, so I decided to use some of them by making Irish Potato Soup, a creamy, but cream-free, potato soup. I wanted to make it with vegetable broth rather than chicken broth, and had added vegetable broth to my shopping list, but before I left for the store, I was thumbing through Mark Bittman's Food Matters, and saw a vegetable broth recipe. I had everything I needed to make Bittman's vegetable broth, so I took the broth off my list and made it Saturday afternoon. My first ever vegetable broth. I took Bittman's advice and sauted the vegetables. I also left the skins on the onions to add more color to the broth. The resultant broth was delicious, and I used up two onions, a few cloves of garlic, 2 potatoes, a few stalks of celery, and some sad looking carrots. I had dinner out: Thai food. Before going out, we made Thai mango pudding, using some unflavored gelatin and coconut milk from the pantry.

On Sunday, Day 8, I used some of the potatoes, an onion, a bunch of shallots (because I didn't have any leeks), a few stalks of celery, and about half of the veggie broth to make the Irish Potato Soup. The recipe calls for 1/4 of butter, I used 1 tablepoon of olive oil.

Sunday's dinner was Black Rice Curried Meatloaf with roasted potatoes and cauliflower. The meatloaf recipe allowed me to use up the open jar of mango chutney in the fridge and to use some black rice in the pantry. Other than the zucchini in the meatloaf I had everything I needed to make this meal. This time I made mini meatloaves. I tossed the potatoes with some garam masala. This time around, Tom gave the meatloaf two thumbs up. The recipe made six mini meatloaves, three of them will go in the freezer.