As you’ve probably surmised by reading my blog, I do a lot of eating out! Even when it isn’t Random Dinner Night or time for Brunch I’m usually too tired or too lazy to make dinner. This is a bad habit! DIY Thursdays ensures that a) I make dinner from scratch one day a week, b) I get together with the lovely Rachel, Olga and Victoria, and c) I get to see this guy more often:

Not a bad trade off, non? A few weeks ago we decided to make Rose Reisman’s Wild and Brown Rice Pilaf with Dried Fruit and Pecans from her book the Complete Light Kitchen. We did a few improvisations changing up the rice and the most risky change up – using an orange freezy as we had run out of orange concentrate!

But the results:

To go with our excellent rice, I brought over some homemade red pepper soup that I made the night before. I’ve been making this red pepper soup for many, many years and it’s honestly the easiest thing to make. The recipe below:

Homemade Easy Red Pepper Soup
Ingredients:
4-6 Large Red Peppers – Remove seeds and chop into chunks
1 large onion – diced
1 carton of vegetable broth
red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
1. Saute diced onion until soft and translucent
2. Add red pepper and full carton of broth, add water – enough to cover red pepper.
3. Bring to a boil and then simmer until red pepper is soft and skin starts separating from pepper. Remove from heat, let it cool.
4. With a hand blender pulse down to a puree
5. Season with cayenne/red pepper flakes and salt and pepper to taste
The recipe makes about a litre of soup. And it’s great now that the mercury has dropped! I find I crave this soup when I am sick as the cayenne pepper kick helps to ease sore throats.
Lastly, we enjoyed a lovely and light Syrah from South Africa called Wolftrap.

So our first DIY Thursday was a success! We had a great time making dinner together! Up next Thursday: A Celebration of Cheese and Carbs – Grill Cheese Edition and OH BABY was it a good one!

Enjoy your dinners, darlings!! Here’s to Thursday! Hurrah!