cold-busting lime carrot soup

If you're down with a spring cold like Ria and I are, last night I made a good soup that has lots of cold-killing ingredients (adapted from 1,001 Vegetarian Recipes):

2 c sliced carrots (we used different colours of the Taproot rainbow carrots, so it looked really pretty)

1 c chopped red or orange sweet pepper

3/4 c sliced celery

1/3 c sliced green onions or leeks

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small red or green chili, minced finely

6 cups veg stock

1/2 cup lime juice

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 c fresh mushrooms, quartered

3-4 T chopped fresh cilantro

Sautee the leeks/onion and garlic in a large pot in a bit of olive oil until soft. Add carrots, pepper, celery, chili for 5 minutes, putting a bit of water in the bottom of the pot if they get dry. Add stock (we save the water when we steam or boil vegetables, and keep topping up a large jug in the freezer), lime juice, and cumin. Heat to boiling. Simmer until carrots are tender (about 15-20 minutes). Add mushrooms; cook another 5 minutes. Top with fresh cilantro.

That soup tasted really good on a sore throat and cleared my stuffed-up nose - make it as spicy as you like.

(Kenneth says to say the lime juice came from our own lime trees... I wish!!!)

Tonight we had a repeat of Kenneth's zucchini pasta sauce ... yum.

-Kathy