Cooking Floyd: Dark Days Challenge: Jan. Week 7

I noticed that while everybody was on Week 7 of the DDC, I was on Week 6.  That's because I started the challenge the first week of December.  So for the sake of continuity and less confusion I've updated to Week 7.  I didn't miss a week, just a number.

Asparagus Soup
Yesterday I was off all day at a Master Food Volunteer meeting so I came home to a cold stove and little time to kick up a hot meal.  The answer was sitting on my pantry shelf.

We preserve asparagus for the winter in soup form.  I always do up a few jars of pickled spears for salads and relish trays, but the rest is soup.  Our asparagus bed will be in its second year of growth this spring and really won't be harvestable until it's third year so we've been buying in asparagus to can.  Since we turn it into soup we don't need to have perfect spears.  The market farmers are very happy to offload their shaggy looking asparagus to us and we're very appreciative of the price break.  This asparagus isn't old or tough, it's just not catalog perfect in appearance and customers will pass it by at market.  We'll buy 20 pounds or more of it at a time and the farmers are happy to not have to count it a loss.  I keep an eye out for pretty spears as I clean it because there are always some and these will be pickled where looks count.

So last night I broke out a jar of soup, warmed it up and added some half and half to it along with a dab of sour cream for garnish.  I raided the salad shelf for beet, mixed lettuce, and spinach greens.

Topped the salad with pumpkin seeds, a ripe pear and dressed it with blue cheese.  Okay, the blue cheese didn't come from a local source but it goes so well with pears and I couldn't resist.

Some slices of no-knead wheat bread stuffed with homemade ham salad and supper was on the table!