MINESTRONE SOUP from Bellyful

This comes from Bellyful. It's a good, basic recipe but has too much pasta in it. I left out the bay leaf, tomato paste and zucchini. I used pureed fire roasted tomatoes, 3/4 c., in place of diced tomatoes. I used frozen drained spinach in place of kale. I used chicken broth and water in place of vegetable broth. I only needed 1/4 t. of table salt and I used close to 1/4 t. red pepper flakes in place of black pepper.

I give this 4 stars.

PEACH GREEK YOGURT CAKE from The Chocolatess (and Ina Garten)

This comes from The Baking Chocolatess via Food Network's Ina Garten. Ina's recipe uses sour cream and this one uses Greek yogurt. I made half in an 8"x2" round pan and it filled it full. It baked in 35 minutes in my Breville oven. I used canned peaches that I patted dry and cut into 1/2" chunks. I used 1/8 t. extra salt. This cake is good but not very moist. Becauses my peaches are very soft I actually like them with a drier cake, so it's OK to me that this cake isn't as moist as it should be. The yogurt is fat free. The original recipe uses fatty sour cream which helps make cakes/muffins moist so if I made this again I'd use sour cream, and I would definitely make this again, and I'd add ground pecans to the batter too.

I made a thick glaze for this too. (1 c. powdered sugar, 1 T. melted butter, 1/8 t. vanilla extract, a drop of almond extract, and enough water/milk to make it of drizzling constistency.) 

I give this 4 stars because it should be moister than it is.

TOMATO AND LENTIL SOUP from Classico

This comes from Classico®, makers of pasta sauce. I used ditalini pasta in place of lentils, I used their Spicy Tomato Basil soup in place of the garlic one called for, and omitted basil since it was in the sauce already. Cumin is listed in the directions but not in the list of ingredients so I added 1 t. I omitted celery. I also needed to add an extra cup of water at the end since this got thick after it sat for an hour. I got five average servings out of this. It's good and very simple to make. The only "work" was chopping onions.

I give this 5 stars.