A Soup to Soothe, and Please, the Stomach

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In this week's share: Red Russian kale, spinach, sweet potatoes, strawberries, radishes, grape tomatoes, green beans. To try Anastatia's fresh spring soup of kale and ginger, click here for the recipe.

Between business trips and pleasure trips, it had been weeks since my friend Maggie and I had cooked dinner together from our CSA share. Although cooking alone certainly has its pleasures, I've missed our weekly dinners and was glad that last week found us both in Cambridge on a Thursday evening.

Nursing an upset stomach, Maggie wanted nothing more than some combination of greens, ginger, and miso. Early in the day, she submitted an email plea for this soup. I acquiesced with only a modicum of grace; I recently embarked on a slightly ambitious exercise regimen, which mostly means that, at any given mealtime, I am absolutely starving. I didn't think green soup was going to cut it.

We picked up our CSA share, and I used the opportunity to duck into the nearby Shaw's and stock up on bread and cheese, just in case our meal was too ascetic for my appetite. I grazed on these as Maggie and I chopped vegetables and argued about class and merit in contemporary American society.

I'd feared the soup would be as high-minded as our conversation, but it was heartier and more appealing than I'd expected, full of chewy greens and bits of sweet potato. The combination of ginger, lemon juice, and miso was an inspired one; it soothed Maggie's stomach but was lively enough that I didn't feel I was eating sick-room food.

Left to myself, I would have cooked something entirely different, but as I walked home I realized that I felt sated but not over-full. If the pleasure of cooking for yourself is eating exactly what you want, sometimes the pleasure of cooking with others is getting a meal you didn't know you wanted.

Recipe: Ginger and Greens Soup