the Dalaverse

Okay. I recently got it into my head that I wanted to start making soup. I love soup, I could eat it at every meal and it seems a fairly straightforward endeavour. Plus it's just about the only way to get me to eat vegetables (except peas; even in soup I'll pick the peas out). I looked up some recipes and was dismayed to find that almost all of them called for the soup ingredients to be pureed, which is a problem because no one in my hall has any gadgetry to make that happen. When my dad once again asked if I was cooking, I said, "I'm thinking of becoming a soup chef, but I can't puree anything!" His solution to this was to buy me a hand blender off Amazon as an early Christmas present. It arrived yesterday and it's a neat little thing made by Kenwood - it has a chopper and a whisk attachment in addition to the hand blender. I've named it Paula Dean, because I love me some Miss Paula and no one makes me want to cook like she does. Except with somewhat less butter.

Now I'm doing the best I can with Google and the Food Network website, but I was wondering of any of you guys had some tried-and-true soup recipes for me to try. I'm looking to start out very beginner-friendly, but I can always tuck more complicated recipes away for future attempts. (The only thing that's out is anything maritime, since I don't eat seafood. Oh, and as previously stated, I despise those miserable little green things commonly called peas.)

In addition to soups, I thought I'd try some fruit smoothies. What can I say, I enjoy liquid food. So any simple smoothie recipes would be welcome as well.