Delicious carrot soup recipe!

I made the most delicious soup this week and I thought I'd share the goodness. I made some modifications but it was sooooo good, healthy, and even my daughter liked it! (My son wouldn't try it but that's typical!) Above are most of the ingredients though I didn't have the leeks in the picture. I am a huge fan of leeks since I tried them out for the Baked Leek and Sweet Potato Gratin recipe I shared before in the post bread of life.

Carrot-Miso Soup with Wasabi Peas
1 Tbs. canola oil
1 medium leek, sliced into thin rings (1 cup)
1 clove garlic, minced (1 tsp.)
1 Tbs. rice wine vinegar
1 ½ lb. carrots, peeled and sliced (5 cups)
3 Tbs. jasmine rice
1 4- x 2-inch piece kombu
1 ½ Tbs. white miso
2 tsp. agave nectar
1/3 cup crushed dried wasabi peas, for garnish

Directions
1. Heat oil in large pot over medium heat. Cook leek in oil 7 minutes, or until softened, stirring occasionally. Stir in garlic, and cook 1 minute more. Add vinegar to deglaze pan, and cook 1 minute.

2. Add carrots, rice, kombu, and 5 cups water. Bring to a simmer, cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook 30 minutes, or until carrots are tender. Remove kombu, and blend soup until smooth.
3. Spoon 1 cup soup into small bowl. Whisk in miso and agave nectar until smooth. Whisk miso-agave-soup mixture back into soup. Serve soup with wasabi peas sprinkled on top.

You boil it up on the stove, and this is before it was pureed. The way I modified it: I did not use the piece of kombu or the miso concentrate but instead used the miso soup from the carton I had, which happened to be made with kombu. Since it was liquid and not concentrate, I used less water. So I think it was like 3 cups I had of the miso soup stuff and 2 cups of water. I used two cloves of minced garlic because you can't use too much garlic! I also didn't have wasabi peas but had these dried tamari peas and I don't recommend that... the soup was GREAT on its own. It may have been good with wasabi pea garnish but it's definitely not important. Oh, I used brown rice instead of Jasmine (white) rice. One more thing - I also added in some celery! I forgot to mention that.
I use the Cuisinhart I got as a wedding gift in 1993! I LOVE that thing!! All I can say was Oh. My. Gosh. This is soooo yummy and I'll definitely be making it again!
I wanted to include another shot of my yellow wall which I love! It looks much better in the light than in the fluorescent lighting which brings out the greener tones. You can see how it looks next to the brick red, and the wood floors. I love being in the kitchen now - the wall makes it so sunny! The border that you can see to the far right was also on the wall that is now yellow, and that's the one I originally wanted to remove from my entire kitchen. But it proved very difficult and the blue wallpaper remover stained the wall blueish - hence the need to paint. I'v been very busy working on an article about the oil spill, and I just booked a flight for a trip to West Texas mid-September for a couple articles I'm doing. I've been a busy girl!