Southern Oregon Soul Food

What is Southern Oregon Soul Food?
It's an earthy mix of vegetative extravagance—if there is such a thing—and carnivore indulgence.  It's a super savory blend of summer's preserved harvest mixed with especially dear winter and spring garden gifts.
In summer, it's a shopping trip to the garden with a will to work with whatever is ripe and ready.  It's a flair to dispense with recipes and rely on your culinary instincts to throw together whatever you have on hand to create something fabulous.
Here in Southern Oregon we're blessed with mild weather that encourages gardening nine months of the year. Our landscape is hill and vale, and those of us in the valleys are entrusted with rich bottom land begging to be cultivated. Not that the land gives itself up to easy harvests; a lot of work goes into every tomato and pepper. But for half a year's effort, there's a full year's eating pleasure. Want more?


Here's a late-winter, early-spring example—a rich and flavorful soup—pictured above,  that combines fresh and preserved ingredients with a few items from the grocery store.
It isn't a recipe, but a guide. It's an example of what I consider soul food here on our Southern Oregon 3.5 acres. I resolved at New Year's to eat something from the garden every day. Not a problem! Add to every recipe pepper flakes. We eat them daily on almost everything. (Made from a blend of serrano, cayenne and numerous other peppers that PK coaxes forth from the earth, dries, then grinds in the blender with his gas mask firmly affixed.)
As for following "recipes," trust your instincts!
Rule of thumb: Use way more veggies than meat.  Or skip the meat and toss in some tofu, and/or top with grated cheese. Use good salt. And if you're lucky enough to have access to REAL chipotle peppers, as opposed to those canned ones in adobo sauce, serve this soup, and just about anything else, with chipotle sauce on the side.

Ingredients in the rich soup pictured above:

• spaghetti squash* - baked and frozen, then used as a side dish or in casseroles and soups. When added to soup, it sorta disappears, but it adds texture, subtle flavor, fiber, and nutrition.
• roasted potatoes* - rosemary and garlic roasted gems - leftovers. Homegrown potatoes keep well for several months if stored in cool darkness. 
• dried tomatoes* - summer's treasures sliced and dried. They reconstitute well for several purposes, even fresh salads
• chicken stock (roasted chicken carcass steeped with one onion, 3 sticks celery, 2 garlic cloves) or commercial stocked, doctored.
• mushrooms - store bought, fresh or dried - optional
• kale* - the king and queen of the winter and early spring garden. Put in twice as much as you think is enough. It shrinks a lot. And all the shrinkage sends gobs of tasty vitamins and minerals into the broth.
• cabbage, shredded - store bought - optional
• sweet red peppers, sliced and added at the last minute - store bought
• leftover organic roasted chicken, shredded
• Diestal Italian turkey sausage - a half to one pound fried and crumbled
• onion - one or two chopped - our onions usually don't last through the winter. Sigh.
• garlic - several cloves, diced. Ours ran out in December.
• onion powder
• garlic powder
• Mrs. Dash
• chipotle sauce* on the side

* homegrown in beautiful Southern Oregon