Melissa's Butternut Squash-Vegetable Soup with Tempeh, Lemon Rice, Mushroom Salad

Our precious little daughter turned a month old yesterday! We intend on having a big 1st year birthday, but thought that we would have a small 1-month birthday. We could have invited many good friends, but decided to keep it low key since this would be her first "event" and just invited a handful of those who have been particularly helpful to her in her first days.

We had food from one of our favorite restaurants, Tower South Indian Restaurant, including two kinds of rice (tamarind and lemon), idli rice cakes, sambar soup, plantain bhaji and lentil donut vada appetizers. We also had grape tomatoes and baby carrots, and got a vegan chocolate birthday cake.

Suddenly we have so much food at home - leftovers from last night and now a new batch of friends are calling to bring food by the next two days. We even got some soup delivered to the home today.

My wife has been asking for more fresh cooked lunches, and I've been making soups and other items, but we also found out about a local woman named Melissa who makes soups every weekend for pickup. Though her "business does not have a vegan focus particularly; it just so happens that 95% of the soups are vegan, and all are vegetarian. Thus far, I have just made tiny herb dumplings for a couple of the soups, and these dumplings have egg in them. I will always let you know when that is the case. Thus far, I have only used soy once, when I made a vegetable soup that had edamame in it. Otherwise you can assume that the soups are vegan and soy free." The choices for this past weekend were Butternut Squash-Vegetable and Navy Bean-Leek-Tomato; she charges $3.50 per pint and $7 per quart.

My wife enjoyed the navy bean soup at lunchtime. For dinner, I heated the squash soup and thought it would be nice to serve with sauteed tempeh - it was good! I also heated the lemon rice from yesterday (with a dollop of coconut chutney), as well as a mushroom salad from Whole Foods Market and some raw broccoli and cauliflower.