Soup Tips and Breakfast

Yesterday Dan spent about 8 hours downtown at his office. *sniff sniff* Today he is working from home, which somehow makes it better. I like knowing he is at least in the house even if he is in his home office.

Soup Tips:

Dinner last night was nothing spectacular. I made a quick pot of red lentil and vegetable soup since it was rainy and gray. Plus the soup could cook while I did a little reading, an added bonus. If you have a slow cooker they are also great to use to make summer soup. I think we all sometimes overbuy veggies; soup is great for those times.

If you are trying to reduce your salt and fat consumption like we are I have a few tips. Add a little acid (lemon juice or vinegar) to your soup after you ladle it into your bowl. If you still think you need salt sprinkle a little sea salt on your portion. I also find that adding hot peppers seems to help reduce the need for salt. Adding a tablespoon of tomato paste also adds richness to soup that you can’t get from whole tomatoes and also seems to reduce the need for salt.

Farmers’ Market:

As usual we started our Sunday morning at the farmers’ market. I wanted to highlight what we bought and how much we spent since some of you are finding E2L to be cost prohibitive. Today we bought:

2 bunches kale
1 bunch collards
2 pounds beets
½ pound fresh ginger
1 pint nectarines
1 quart fava beans
2 pints blackberries
1 large watermelon
6 tomatoes
6 cucumbers
4 big zucchini
2 yellow squash
1 cabbage
1 quart Italian beans
1 bag mixed salad greens
1 bunch cilantro
2 large beets (for raw ravioli)

Part of that was our CSA share ($20 a week) and the remainder was purchased for $32. This $52 dollars of produce will last the two of us most of the week.  To give you an idea of volume it filled 4 reusable grocery bags. If you are having difficulty finding reasonably priced organic produce I highly recommend your local farmers’ market. Costco also carries quite a bit of organic produce which we make great use of in the winter.

Breakfast today:

After our early morning trip to the market we both wanted blackberries. We had a very simple fruit salad as follows:

Fruit Salad
Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 cantaloupe
2 cups black berries
½ cup blueberries

Directions:

Toss together and enjoy.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 176.42
Calories From Fat (6%) - 11.27

Total Fat - 1.35g
Saturated Fat - 0.17g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 45.96mg
Potassium - 998.11mg
Total Carbohydrates - 41.61g
Fiber - 10.99g
Sugar - 32.33g
Protein - 4.59g

Comments:

Sometimes you just want a fresh bowl of fruit and that was the mood we were in today. If you want to make this more “gourmet” you could add some fresh mint or a little cashew crème fraiche that you have sweetened with stevia. I also like my fruit salad with hulled hempseeds if you enjoy those.

Each serving of this fruit salad contains approximately 9,600IU of vitamin A, 135mg of vitamin C, 70mg of calcium, 1.5mg of iron, 2mg of vitamin E, 95mcg of folate, 40mcg of vitamin K, 75mg of phosphorus, and 65mg of magnesium.

Next recipe:

Surprise, surprise to go with the fruit salad we had another variation of fresh juice. This is the version that I seem to make most often. I suppose you could call it Dan’s favorite juice. Here is what we include:

Dan’s Favorite Juice with Beet
Serves 3

Ingredients:

½ pound of baby organic spinach
2 kale leaves
10 carrots
2 apples
1 lemon
2 inches fresh ginger
3 stalks celery
2 medium beets

Directions:

Run everything through your juicer and pour into a cold glass. As usual I used glasses that I store in the freezer just for our morning juice.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 214.27
Calories From Fat (6%) - 12.08

Total Fat - 1.51g
Saturated Fat - 0.24g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 311.54mg
Potassium - 1742.25mg
Total Carbohydrates - 51.58g
Fiber 0.00g**
Sugar - 25.08g
Protein - 6.83g
**manually zeroed out

Comments:

We both really like this juice. It is slightly sweet but not in an overwhelming way. I would say it tastes fresh and is very refreshing. It has a little kick from the fresh ginger and tartness from the lemon. We think it is good mix of flavors.

Each serving of this juice contains approximately 55,800IU of vitamin A, 100mg of vitamin C, 240mg of calcium, 3.9mg of iron, 3.6mg of vitamin E, 0.7mg of vitamin B6, 250mcg of folate, 600mcg of vitamin K, 180mg of phosphorus, and 120mg of magnesium. This is why I love fresh juice. You really can’t beat the nutritional value.

Unrelated notes:

It was wonderful yesterday to get a temporary break from the heat and we really needed the rain. The farmers this morning the farmers were all talking about how much we needed the rain. However, today the temperatures are supposed to go back to the mid 90’s. This means I want cold food today. The soup I made yesterday may end up the freezer.

Today I will be making something with spiralized zucchini for the meal with my parents. I don’t know what that means yet, but that is what I am thinking now. At the moment I am torn better pesto, Mexican and Asian. I suppose I need to figure it out soon. *rolls eyes*

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. Talk to you again soon.