Peanut Noodle Vegetable Soup 5/5 Spoons

I bet you all get really sick of me reviewing 5 star recipes. Actually, why would you? Don't you want to know that I'm constantly eating amazing meals? I would like to wish wonderful meals for everyone in the world. Well if you want to see me break and get mad about something I ate then this post is not for you.

(Photos courtesy of thursday night smackdown)

So I woke up this morning with the full intended desire to make some coffee, sit on our patio and read. Then as soon as I got dressed and my coffee was waiting for me, it started to rain. Dammit. I sat around feeling sorry for myself and then realized I have a lot of veggies to eat up and whoa, I should make that Peanut Noodle Vegetable Soup I had a recipe for. I thought this was also one of those throwaway recipes that I wouldn't end up making and I would have a sad, floppy head of cabbage just rotting away in my fridge. Nope, I wouldn't allow that to happen to this most honorable of vegetables! I'm so glad I made this, especially on such a drizzly dark day. It was warming, creamy but light and full of spice and tart sharpness. A lot of different wonderful flavors play together and sing in your mouth. Plus, it is SUPER healthy. Here are my tweaks and notes:

-- I'm really bad at remembering to grab fresh ginger when I'm at the market, even if it is on my list. So like many other recipes, I used 1/2 T. of dried ginger instead.
-- I definitely used more than 1 t. of red chili flakes. I would guess about twice that because I like it spicy.
-- Did you know that sweet potatoes are different than yams? I used a sweet potato here, there are not a lot of yams floating around in Chicago.
-- When I use canned tomatoes, I puree them in food processor because I don't like chunks. I think the tomato puree in this was perfect.
-- I used vegetable broth over water just to add more flavor.
-- I'm pretty loyal to Jif or Peter Pan peanut butter, so I used that instead of natural. I honestly don't think it would make much of a difference here.
-- So I cooked some cellophane noodles and they like grossed me out once they were done. I know it sounds weird but the texture made me nauseous. At the end here I threw in about 1/2 box of thick spaghetti broken into small pieces. It was perfect.
-- The lime in here is SO GOOD. I would suggest just squeezing the whole lime into the soup and mixing it a bit right before you serve. And I didn't add anymore hot sauce, but it would be nice to cater to each individual person's taste and have it on the side.

Okay, so it seems like a lot of notes, but really I don't think I deviated too much from the original recipe. So yeah, go out and make this now. It is chock full of vitamin C and beta carotene (from the sweet potato, carrots and cabbage) and protein from the peanut butter (although adding some tofu in here would be even better.) All I'm saying is that I love you guys and you need your vitamins. Mama is just watching out for you.