Tag Archives: Soup

Gingered Carrot Soup

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Inspired by my zucchini soup experiments a few weeks ago, I decided to try something a little different.  As I walked through the produce isle at the grocery store, I picked up a bag of peeled baby carrots which I like to snack on during the week.  I looked down and saw a 2 lb bag of large carrots and it hit me… Carrot Soup!!  Not only was it insanely easy to make, its very good and, of course, nutritious.
Ingredients: 
  • 2 lb bag of carrots peeled and diced
  • 2 cloves of garlic peeled and smashed
  • vegetable or chicken broth
  • water
  • ¼ tsp ground ginger
  • ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 oz softened cheese.
Directions:
  1. Place diced carrots in soup pot along with garlic cloves just cover tops of carrots with broth.
  2. Bring to low simmer and cook covered until carrots are soft.
  3. As broth evaporates during the cooking process, continue to replace evaporated broth only to cover carrots.
  4. Once cooked, take immersion blender and blend carrots in the pot.
  5. Add water to create desired thickness.  I added approximately 1 cup to mine.
  6. Add cheese and spices and blend again.
Voila!  Delish!
I was so proud of the way it turned out that I called my mother and asked her to come over for a taste.  The following is the dialogue from that lovely conversation:
Mom: Ooh, spicy. Very good, but don’t eat too much of this. (as she puts another spoonful in her mouth)

Me: Why? It’s healthy. 

Mom: (pointing to my face) It’s going to make you turn orange!
Me: (shaking my head and smirking)
Mom: (smiling now but trying to be serious) Fine! Don’t listen to your mother.

May 6th: Green Machine Soup

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green machine soup

 

Today I am grateful for the opportunity to make myself a yummy dinner and relax.  This recipe was inspired by my Spanish co-worker’s quick fix dinner recipe for zucchini soup.  She calls it “Crema de Calabazin” or “Cream of Zucchini.”  I attempted to make it the night she told me about it but made the mistake of making it too thin and watery.  I reattempted it today and added my own touches to make it more nutritious AND amazingly delicious.

Ingredients:

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  • 4 large zucchini
  • 2 large garlic cloves
  • water and vegetable bouillon
  • cube or prepared broth (either chicken or vegetable)
  • 2 oz of soft cheese
  • 1 cup of copped kale
  • ripe avocado for serving

 

 

Kinda-Cuban Chicken Soup

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I’ve been craving some chicken soup for a little while and today I jumped at the chance to make myself a big ol’ pot of it!  I love all types of chicken soups.  I adore chicken matzo ball soup, traditional american chicken soup with noodles, chicken tortilla soup… but my favorite of all-time has GOT to be my momma’s recipe for Cuban chicken soup.

The reason I have called it “kinda-Cuban” chicken soup in this article is because I omitted the noodles (broken up spaghetti noodles) that are traditionally included in the soup but I can’t stand.  Secondly, I forgot to buy corn which is actually one of my favorite parts of the soup. It was a real bummer to realize this when I got back from the grocery store but the soup turned out pretty good regardless.  I’ll include them in the recipe but I’ll admit to having had a brain fart when I made it for myself this evening.

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Ingredients:

  • 3-4 stalks of celery
  • 3-4 carrots or 1 small bag of baby carrots
  • 1 medium onion
  • 1 medium calabaza pumpkin  (if you can’t find this at your grocery store, use butternut squash like I did today because its not in season)
  • 2 medium pieces of Malanga (this is a traditional Caribbean root vegetable similar to a potato but A LOT more dense.  It can be found in most grocery stores but, if you ABSOLUTELY MUST substitute it, use potatoes.  I’m warning you though…. it just won’t be the same)
  • 2 cobs of corn quartered
  • 2 pounds of skinless dark meat chicken.  (trim off the extra fat)
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1 envelope of Sazon Goya complete seasoning mix with saffron
  • 2 chicken bouillon cubes

Cuban chicken soup is traditionally enjoyed with a squeeze of lime juice and a side of greasy white rice…. (Cubans are not known to be healthy eaters.)

Or, you can enjoy it my way and enjoy it with a healthy squeeze of lime juice and a few dashes of tabasco sauce! 🙂  Either way, it MUST have a squeeze of lime juice.  It brings out all the flavors and takes the soup to a whole new level of yumminess.

Enjoy!!  What are YOUR favorite types of chicken soup recipes?!  I’d love for you to share!

Ginger Butternut Squash

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pumpkin soup 1

On my way to the grocery store this afternoon, I called my friend Magaly to see how she was doing.  True to her energetic and endearingly quirky way of being, she went into some random tangent about a topic that was completely unrelated but interesting none the less… “How do you make squash soup?  I tried to make it the other day and it was grainy and awful!”

I gave her a quick recap on how I usually make the soup then felt instantly inspired to make and eat some myself tonight!  There are very few ingredients, it contains barely any fat and it is completely vegetarian.  Although I finished making the soup way after I had eaten my steelhead trout dinner, I filled a mug and had treated myself to some on the couch while watching tv.  I also packed myself some for lunch tomorrow.  Yum!!

Ingredients:

  • 2, 12 oz packages of frozen cooked squash
  • 3-4 carrots
  • 3-4 stalks of celery
  • 1/2 large onion or 1 small
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 vegetable bouillon cube
  • 1/2 tsp each of garlic powder, ginger and cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp (or more if you like spice) red cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric
  • 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
  • (1 tbsp sugar is optional)

Directions:

The ginger and cayenne give this one a real kick.  Enjoy!

Kale Soup for “chilly” Florida winter nights

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soup no spoon

Its cold out again tonight… and when I say “cold”, I mean its below 50 degrees.  I realize that this is by no means cold for the rest of the country but it is for us (me)!

A friend of mine has been bringing in a really yummy-looking cabbage soup to work this week for lunch.  It looked hardy and chock full of veggies and since I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like, I thought I’d give her recipe it a try.  I didn’t have any cabbage in the house but did have half a bag of kale in the freezer so decided to change it up.  I also went kinda nuts emptying out whatever veggies I had in the fridge and bought a few more at the grocery store before getting home from work.  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

  • 2, 14 oz cans of diced tomatoes (I used the “zesty jalapeño” flavor but plain is good too)
  • 1, 28 oz can of tomato puree
  • 1 beef bouillon cube
  • 1 envelope of powdered onion soup
  • 1 onion
  • 6 cloves of garlic
  • 4 stalks of celery
  • 3 carrots
  • 3 zucchini
  • 1 pint of mushrooms
  • quarter of a “calabaza” or yellow squash of choice
  • 1/2 large bag of kale

pot of vegie soup

Directions:

  1. pour contents of all canned tomatoes (both diced and puree) into a large stock pot and fill with about 8 – 10 cups of water.
  2. Add bouillon cube and onion soup envelope
  3. add chopped veggies
  4. Simmer until tender

Done!!  Soooo good and even better for you!!! Kale is a super food full of iron and tomatoes are rich in vitamin C and anti-oxidants.  Enjoy!

Healthy and Fast Weeknight Meal #1: Gazpacho

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Yummy and fresh

Yummy and fresh

I used to make the excuse that I was too tired to cook dinner after work waaaayyyyy too frequently. Unless I snuck over to my mom’s house and mooched a home-cooked meal from her, my excuses usually led to either too many calories (half a box of mac and cheese one night, the other half the next) or too few calories (a bag of low-fat microwave popcorn and a can of Coke Zero). Either way, the choices were horrible and the food tasted like crap… which, coincidentally, was how they made me feel.

The truth is, I was always the one that helped my mom prepare meals growing up and am usually her designated sous chef for holidays and family gatherings so, there was really no excuse for me not to have known how to feed myself a little better. Despite whatever culinary skills I may delude myself into believing I possess, however, you actually need very little (if any) skills in the kitchen to prepare some basic and healthy meals during the week. Trust me, your body will thank you and I bet you’ll save a lot of money as well. Take-out and prepared foods at the supermarkets are REALLY expensive and often not that healthy.

Monday afternoon, I received an email from my boyfriend with this link, along with the following message: “I’ve been craving gazpacho for a while. Would you make this for me, please?”

Spanish vegetable soup for dinner on the first day back to school and after a SERIOUSLY SWEATY hot yoga class?… I was up for the challenge!

Now, I may not be a lot of things, but one thing I am certain that I AM is practical. Practicality comes in handy when you need to get a task done quickly and efficiently. Weeknight Cooking Tip #1: The first thing you should always do when making a new recipe for the first time is analyze how you could simplify it without taking away its nutritional value or flavor.

If you open the link to the recipe, you’ll see that it calls for 2 lbs of fresh tomatoes. Can you imagine having to slice and dice 2 lbs of fresh tomatoes and adding water to get them to the right consistency?!… not to mention having to worry if they were sweet, unripe or mealy when you got them from the produce isle? In the words of Sweet Brown, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” Instead, I used whole, canned San Marzano plum tomatoes in their own juice. These can be bought in 1 lb cans and have a sweet flavor and the perfect texture.

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Everything else was easy. I just dumped it into the same bowl and blended it! Notice I said “bowl” and not “blender.” Weeknight Cooking Tip #2: Invest in an emersion blender (hand-held stick blender). It will be the best $45 investment you ever make for your kitchen and you will be eternally grateful to me for having given you the brilliant idea. It will save you so much time and mess that you’ll be more willing to make recipes that used to make your kitchen sink look like a war-zone. I use mine to blend my pumpkin soup right in the soup pot, sauces on the stove, smoothies in plastic cups and even salsas in their serving dishes.

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From prep to finish, I think the whole meal took me about 15 minutes to make. And voila! We had a pretty healthy and delicious dinner on the table.

The recipe suggests adding either basil or cilantro as a topping to the soup. Cilantro is DEFINITELY the way to go here because it pairs better with the chipotle, if you ask me. Some people have a bizarre aversion to cilantro, however, so do what tastes best to you…

How about the protein, you ask? Well, some gazpacho varieties are traditionally garnished with chopped hard boiled eggs. We always have a carton of eggs at home so I boiled a few of these up and served them along side the soup. If you are vegetarian/ vegan, however, it would be just as tasty with some sauteed extra-firm tofu cubes floating on top (maybe dust them with a little onion powder, garlic powder and cumin)!

Weeknight Cooking Tip #3: Make enough for left-overs! Guess what the best thing about this meal is?!… We had it for dinner today too, which meant NEITHER of us had to cook 😉

Do you have any go-to weeknight meals?
Is there a web site you love to go to for to search for recipes?
Any great cooking short-cuts you’d like to share?
Any great gadgets YOU think are must-haves for they kitchen?
Please share! As always, I love hearing from you.