This is an excellent recipe. While fine as it is, I changed it up a little bit to suit personal taste and ingredients on hand. I had to skip the cloves since I had none, but cloves are not my favourite taste anyway. I brushed maple syrup on my ham about 2 hours ahead of time and let it set. I also added a few drops of liquid smoke to both the water my ham was baked in as well as the stove top sauce, to give it a hint of hickory which we love in this house. I baked it about an hour earlier on a lower heat. I made a double batch of the sauce since we LOVE sauce on our whipped potatoes, which we always have with ham =o). I also thickened with a little cornstarch. Great base recipe, easily altered to suit your personal taste!

Reviewed On: Mar. 23, 2008

This is a great base soup. I made plenty of changes to suit my own tastes, though. I grated the carrots to make them easier and quicker to cook. I added a TON more Indian spices, including garam marsala and tumeric, and used HOT curry. I love spicey foods! I also added chopped celery. When everything was sauteed to softness, I pureed it; once pureed, I added about 2/3 cup plain yogourt, which reduces the hotness of the spices without taking away the flavour. The yogourt will also make the soup creamier and a bit thicker. It turned out perfect for me! If you are adverse to strong carrot flavour, try using the sweeter baby carrot...be aware that they always seem to take longer to cook!

Reviewed On: Nov. 19, 2007

Sorry, this just did NOT work out for me...I thought I would LOVE this but I found it truly disappointing...I followed the recipe exactly (how could you not? It's so simple), but it was a huge tasteless letdown =o(.

Reviewed On: Jul. 23, 2007