Last week I headed down to Belgium to visit my lovely friend Marjolein. She’s a member of a program at a local farm where, having paid a set price for the year, she can come and go as often as she likes and pick whatever produce she needs directly from the ground. I absolutely love the idea and I think that if I didn’t live in the middle of a city, and if I owned a car (produce can be heavy!), I would be all over that program. Marjolein knows me too well at this point, so she knew to bring me along for the harvesting!

Not that I’m a seasoned country girl by any means, having grown up in Toronto and being generally something of a ‘princess’ (not to mention deathly afraid of most bugs)… But I love all things food, and I guess the feeling I get when I’m surrounded by fresh produce must be the same sort of feeling artists get when they’re faced with a blank canvas. So many possibilities!

I couldn’t believe how many fresh herbs were up for grabs: tons and tons of fresh chervil, sage, tarragon, parsley, mint, and basil. And the zucchinis! Huge rows of zucchini plants, bursting with those lovely blossoms and absolutely the most massive zucchinis I’ve ever seen.

(Do you see where I’m going with this yet?)

Zucchini soup is something that I make year round – it’s delicious, easy, quick, and filling. But seeing row upon row of bright green and yellow zucchinis, and being able to smell the herbs before I could even see them, it dawned on me that this is the perfect time to whip up a big batch of it. (Although, even though the big zucchinis are awesome, you should keep your biggest ones for other dishes, as they don’t have quite as much flavour as their smaller counterparts.)

So, if you’ve got more zucchini in the house than you know what to do with – or even if you don’t! – give this super easy and deliciously vibrant soup a try. Lately it’s looked rather more like fall than summer around here, so I’m glad for the warming feeling of hot soup in my stomach. But if it’s sweltering where you are, this would also be delicious cold. The fresh mint and basil make this a refreshing dish regardless!

By the way: I know I’m giving you a specific recipe below, but this soup is so easy to whip up that you shouldn’t get too worried about the details. For example, while I’ve given measurements here, a trick that works every time is simply to follow a rough 2:1 ratio of zucchini to potato and to put in the same volume of stock as you have in both vegetables combined. For example, in this recipe I’ve got 6 cups of stock to 2 cups potato + 4 cups zucchini. Bearing this general ratio in mind you could whip this baby up in your sleep!

One final note before I leave you with this recipe: if you have a food-related blog, I’d love to check it out! I’m part of a really great community of like-minded people on Instagram and I’m looking to build a similar environment here as well. Leave your link in the comments, and if you’re interested, you can also follow my blog with Bloglovin.