Homemade Fall Veggie Soup, also known as....

My little one cannot knock his cold. Housebound the past four days, we'd eaten through the fabulous lasagna, meatballs and lentil soup I had stored in the freezer. But today there were slim pickings so we went to the market. I popped various veggies into the cart, deciding that I'd make a colorful soup. Maybe this comforting soup will make him healthy. You can make soup with any of your favorite veggies, so add or omit to make a soup you and your family will enjoy...

Fall Veggie Soup

(will make a giant pot, enough to share with a friend or freeze)

1 butternut squash (as you see above, I bought this already chopped)

2-3 parsnips, peeled and chopped

4-5 carrots, washed and chopped

1-2 onions, chopped

6 or so pieces of celery, chopped

2 zucchinis, chopped

1 head of cauliflower, chopped

1 celery root (the gnarly thing up there in the right corner), peeled and chopped

olive oil

kosher salt

2 32 oz containers veggie stock (I used Kitchen Basics brand today)

alphabet shaped pasta (optional)

To get a nice, deep flavor, I put chopped veggies on cookie sheets, drizzled a bit of olive oil over them, sprinkled on a bit of kosher salt and roasted them in a 375 degree oven until just about tender (20 minutes or so). Then I tossed all of the roasted veggies in a big stock pot with both cartons of vegetable stock and let the soup simmer over medium-low heat until the vegetables were tender. 8 minutes before serving, I tossed the alphabet pasta in (my three-year-old's request...making the vegetable soup "exciting").

Here is the recipe in photos...

One baking sheet of "orange" veggies had a single layer of carrots, parsnips, and butternut squash. The other baking sheet of "green veggies" had the onions, celery, zucchini and celery root. (While one sheet turned out green and the other orange, it wasn't about color as much as it was combining veggies that would have about the same cook time.) Drizzled them with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkling of kosher salt...

The "orange" sheet of veggies went into the oven first, along with my new favorite frozen pizza (in case my kids didn't last until the soup was ready). Once the pizza came out, the green sheet of veggies went in. (Both sheets of veggies spent a total time of about 20 minutes roasting...)

When both sheets of veggies were just about tender,

all of the vegetables were tossed into a big stock pot.

Two cartons of vegetable stock were added, and I let the soup simmer over medium-low heat while I helped my seven-year-old with his reading homework, went through the mail and checked my email.

Just before serving the soup, I let my little one toss in a half box or so of alphabet pasta, thus upping the excitement level of tonight's dinner.

And there it is, so easy. Rich with the taste of all of those vegetables. I let them name the soup (OK, fine, it was a distraction tactic: they get to toss a name idea out after each bite. And yes, it made the soup go down the little hatches in no time.) The winning name: Orange Pumpkin Alphabet Soup Even Though There's No Pumpkin In It.

Holiday Candy & Chocolate Bouquets - Coming Soon!

Take a sneak peek at our latest designs of

Candy & Chocolate Bouquets

coming soon to our online gifts boutique!

Celebration is Key

"When Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her." -- Matthew 8:14-15

Let's not grow desensitized with the supernatural healing power of God. We need to celebrate every healing -- from the fever that leaves to the blind eye that is opened. In fact, celebration is the key to more! Jesus took time to heal Peter's mother-in-law from a fever and it got recorded in the Bible. Don't accept even a headache or toothache. Jesus healed every sickness and every disease.

Extras

Eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut:

How and why people get lost in buildings.

The sound of music makes time fly.

Do monkeys think in metaphors?

East Asians and Westerners responded differently to the news of the Swine Flu outbreak of 2009. A new study suggests this is because the greater historical threat of pathogens in the Asian region has led to a 'culturally adapted' behavioural response in that area [pdf].

Does speaking a different language change your personality? [see earlier]

Children with autism were more easily tricked by the vanishing ball illusion, not less as the researchers predicted.

The psychological effects of going to a music festival.

Cordelia Fine, author of the widely publicised new book Delusions of Gender, also has a journal article out: From Scanner to Sound Bite: Issues in Interpreting and Reporting Sex Differences in the Brain.

Past research has shown that observers can accurately judge a person's sexuality from their face within a fraction of a second. A new study suggests the judgment is made based on the gendered appearance of the face - for example a more feminine male face is more likely to be perceived as belonging to a homosexual man.

Black Tuesday

You all know its coming, but check out this really awesome video that RedTailMedia made for us just for fun! It even gets us excited!

The Crazy Old Days

I missed the crazy old days with my crazy old ways.

What happened to the spontaneous me that did crazy old stunts and ate crazy food?

People age and settle and I've been rather please with my apartment and life and ways.

But every now and then, I think of the crazy old days and my crazy old stunts and smile.

There was once a crazy young exuberant girl that would travel to the ends of the world to seek her adventure and find her entertainment and explore her world.




It was the good old days.

Speakers with a foreign accent are perceived as less credible - and not just because of prejudice

Speakers with a foreign accent are perceived as less believable than native speakers. A new study shows this isn't just because of prejudice towards 'outsiders'. It also has to do with the fluency effect, one manifestation of which is our tendency to assume that how easily a message is processed is a mark of its truthfulness. The effort required to understand an accented utterance means that the same fact is judged as less credible when uttered by an accented speaker, compared with a native speaker. This remains true even if the accented speaker is merely passing on a message from a native speaker.

Shiri Lev-Ari and Boaz Keysar recruited 9 speakers to utter 45 trivia facts, such as 'A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel'. Three of the speakers were native (American) English speakers; three had mild foreign accents and originated from Poland, Turkey or Austria/Germany; and three had strong accents and were from either Korea, Turkey or Italy.

Twenty-eight undergrad participants rated the veracity of each of the spoken facts (which speakers uttered which facts varied from participant to participant in a balanced design). Crucially, participants were led to believe that the study was really about using intuition to judge facts. Also, it was made clear to them that the facts had been penned by the researchers - that the speakers were merely acting as messengers. To drill home this idea, the researchers also had the participants go through the charade of themselves uttering a few facts, ostensibly to be presented to other participants.

On a 0-14cm scale from 'definitely false' at one end to 'definitely true' at the other, the participants rated facts spoken by mild and heavily accented speakers as less believable than facts uttered by native English speakers (the mean ratings were 6.95, 6.84 and 7.59, respectively - a statistically significant difference).

What if participants are made aware that the difficulty they have processing a foreign accent could be interfering with their judgements? A second study with another 27 undergrads tested this very idea. It was similar to the first but this time participants were told the explicit aim of the study. Now, facts spoken by a speaker with a mild accent were judged to be just as credible as facts spoken by a native English speaker. However, facts spoken by a heavily accented speaker were still judged to be less true. It seems we can override our bias for assuming easily processed utterances are more truthful - but only up to a point. Also, it's worth remembering that in real life, prejudice towards foreign speakers is likely to augment the effects observed here.

'These results have important implications for how people perceive non-native speakers of a language, particularly as mobility increases in the modern world, leading millions of people to be non-native speakers of the language they use daily,' the researchers concluded. 'Accent might reduce the credibility of non-native job seekers, eye-witnesses, reporters or news anchors.'
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Lev-Ari, S., and Keysar, B. (2010). Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46 (6), 1093-1096 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.025

Link to related open-access feature article in The Psychologist magazine [Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz describe some fascinating findings on how fluency affects judgement, choice and processing style].