Way back during the Foodbuzz Blogger conference I met the fine folks at Cook! Real Simple Delicious and they offered to send me three of their soups to review. This San Francisco-based company offers a detox diet plan with food delivery and a retail arm with heat and serve soups. Most of their website is now devoted to the detox plan, not my cup of tea, but you can go there to check it out.

Gorgeous packaging, no?

So here’s where I enroll myself in the blogger hall of shame. It took me a while, but I eventually prepared, photographed and mentally composed blog copy for all three soups. So thoroughly, in fact, that it wasn’t until this week when I heard from Cook! that I realized I never posted said review. Imagine my horror this morning when I realized that the photos from two of the three soups have magically disappeared.
Bad Blogger Sara.

So what follows is a much shorter post, with my sincere apologies to Cook! Real Simple Delicious. Once I find the photo gremlins I’ll give them what for on your behalf.

The surviving photos are from the Thai Green Curry.

A photo survivor

I love the portion control in the packaging, as well as the heat-and-eat convenience. Full ingredient and nutrition information for all the soups are available on their website, so I won’t list that here.

Probably should have picked a contrasting-colored bowl.

The flavor was good, nice coconut-curry broth, but no where near as hot as I usually order or prepare my Thai. As you can see, I also served this over jasmine rice.

I even enjoyed the Thai eggplant in this entree

The premise of Cook! Real Simple Delicious soups is to provide delicious, vegan, organic, gluten-free soups with real ingredient labels that anyone can read. The soups come packaged in 1-3 serving sizes. Now here’s where truth in blogging comes. I think animals are delicious, I don’t go out of my way to buy organic anything, I digest gluten just fine and I love all things milk and dairy. So when I say that the All-Bean Chili knocked my socks off, that’s quite the compliment.

The All Bean Chili combines black beans, pinto beans and lima beans with other vegetables and spices that have to include chipotle. This entree/soup has a rich smoky flavor that is incredibly satisfying- I did not miss the meat at all. I’ve always been one of those weird people who like lima beans, but this chili elevated them to a whole new level. I was FLOORED by this entree and will reach for it again when my veggie friends come to dine.

My third soup was the Red Lentil Veggie and I found simple to be the key word for this offering.  I found it rather blah and bland. I served it over rice and then added chili garlic sauce to give it some kick.

So like many things in life, it all comes down to taste, preference and values. If you are looking for convenient, vegan, organic, gluten-free soups and entrees, check out Cook! Real Simple Delicious. If you’re more expansive in your food choices, these might be a good starting point for you to add more ingredients and assemble a meal.

Soups and entrees can currently be found in Bay-Area retail locations like Whole Foods. Click here for a full list of locations.