Safety Glove and Vegetable Soup

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who has all sorts of scars on my fingers from "cutting accidents." Somehow the knife slices fingers more easily than a tomato. That's what happened to me other other night, and not for the first time.

A few years ago, I bought my kids and myself safety gloves that we're supposed to wear on the non-cutting hand to prevent these annoying, unintentional and sometimes long-healing slices. They were definitely not the most enthusiastically and graciously received gifts. Only one of my kids even admitted that it's needed. The rest made it clear that I had wasted my money. I kept one for myself and must admit that it has been sitting a the drawer with lots of kitchen gadgets I'd been given by my husband never to be used. But that last cut really bothered me, more as a reminder than anything else. I didn't need professional first aid.

I wore the glove on my left hand when cutting up vegetables yesterday for the post-fast, Ta'anit Ester-Fast of Ester, and Mishloach Manot (Purim food gift) Vegetable Soup.

Here's an illustrated Vegetable Soup Recipe:

For this vegetable soup, you need two pots, cutting implements and boiling water.

1- take a cup of dried peas, put them in a pot, add boiling water, cover for an hour or more so they will be at least partially cooked before you add them to the vegetables.

Here are all of the vegetables I used, 3 carrots, 2 squash, 2 onions, 1 sweet potato and some fresh garlic. 

As you can see, my left had is protected by the glove, even though I did very little actual cutting. That's because I "cheated" and used the food-processor for the actual slicing.

As you may notice from the magimix 2000 written here, my food processor is old and small. I work in batches and keep emptying it when full. There are two major advantages to using one especially for larger soups.
1- quicker and safer preparation since I don't have to do so much cutting.
2- it slices the vegetables thin, so cooking takes much less time. 

1- I put all the sliced vegetables in a large covered pot with oil and let it begin the cooking process.
2- I also boiled water, and when it was boiling...
3- I added the parboiled (partially cooked) peas to the vegetable pot and used the boiling water to rinse out the pea pot and added all the liquid to the cooking vegetables.
4- Lower to simmer after it all reaches a boil, and then have it cook for 40-60 minutes.
5- Just before you turn off the flame/heat, add salt and pepper. You can add parsley or whatever other seasonings you want at the same time.

Wait at least 15 minutes after turning off the stove before you serve the soup.

This is a "never fail," "TNT-tried and true" Vegetable Soup.