Carrot Potato Soup with Tiny Buffalo Meatballs

Author Notes

I created this soup when I was trying to be a vegan. It didn't work out so well, but the soup did!

For the last few months I’ve been feeling as if something has been missing from my life. More specifically, my body has started to crave animal products once again. For awhile I resisted the urge because I felt that I needed to be committed to the vegan path I started to follow around 8 months ago. If you have read any of my previous posts, you will notice that I was not an extremely strict vegan though. Occassionally, I would have fish and cheese found its way into many of my recipes as well.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my own family background and doing some anthropological reading of the history of food and humans and seem to always come back to the fact that there are not many traditional vegan societies out there. Even when it seems that there is, bugs and the like must come into contact with the veggies and grain and therefore must end up in the bellies of the vegetarian/vegan groups. Of course, with modern technology and pesticides, I think that not many bugs get into our food supply, but there is really no way of knowing.

Since winter does not seem to want to go away from NY, I give you this soup. I just threw it together with what I had on hand. You could easily substitute leeks for onions and sweet potatoes/butternut squash for the potato. The meatballs were very simply spiced and could be left out as well to make a hearty vegan soup as well. I also don’t seem to be able to let go of my obsession with orange hued soups, I always come back to this sunny color for some reason. —testkitchenette