Almost there...

To celebrate the passing of Indian Summer, the best time, in my opinion, for absolutely scrumptious (and cheap!) finds at the farm market, I made a late summer soup.

If you know him at all, you know my husband-to-be is absolutely obsessed with soups. He ordered it on our first date, and will always, without fail, summer or winter, order the soup if it's on the menu. It was the first meal I made him and it's requested almost weekly of me to repeat. I sort of went on soup strike for the summer because one; the concept of chilled soup is completely disgusting to me and two; the idea of cooking and/or eating soup when it already feels like I'm breathing it outside is completely disgusting to me. So, this week (when I say "this week" I mean three weeks ago) he got an OK when the request came in. I used the last of my stock of sweet corn, green beans, tomatoes and summer squash.

I started off by sauteing my one large onion in olive oil and prepped my other veggies while that cooked. I cut off the kernels to about 5 ears of corn in a bowl to catch all the starchy goodness. In there I toss a couple sprigs of thyme, salt and pepper and a little red pepper flake. I snipped the ends and cut my cup of beans in half and I cut the 3 squash into little half moons. To the onions I added in about three cloves of minced garlic as well as my corn. That sauteed for about five to six minutes on medium and I added in my squash and beans. Because I'm a big fan of crispy, fresh tasting vegetables in soups, I only let this saute for about five minutes. I added to this a quart of vegetable stock and about a cup of leftover marinara sauce. If you don't always have sauce on hand like me, you can just add in crushed tomatoes and basil, but I think the sauce imparts a huge amount of flavor and none of the effort, since you've done it in advance. Let the soup simmer for a bit, taste for seasoning and adjust.
I find when making soups, if you season each ingredient as you add it, at the end of everything, it should be well flavored. The soup is super tasty for being such a quickie and seemingly creamy from the starchy corn. It's also extremely filling by itself, but to serve with this, I made a VERY buttery garlic bread. I blended some raw garlic and rosemary with some earth balance, slathered a huge ciabatta loaf with said butter, wrapped in foil and let it crunch up in the oven while the soup simmered. So good. Not at all good for me, but so, so good for my cheese cravings that are taking over my brain.

Does anyone have a favorite fill-in for stretchy/greasy cheese cravings? And don't tell me soy cheese, 'cause I'll know you're a dirty liar.