Vegan MoFo 17.2: Chanterelle Soup & Pineapple and Blackberry Salad

Tuesday:

Nothing like a rainy day help you get your reading time in. It was raining when we woke up and it rained until bedtime. It was one of those cold rains you feel in your joints. My right knee was screaming at me so I decided to spend the day relaxing as much as possible.

No surprise that we had our usual green smoothie with kale and banana for breakfast.

Lunch was leftover soup from the weekend with dehydrated red onions.

My newest obsession is frozen bananas. Nothing special just a frozen banana I wrap with wax paper and eat out of my hand. I like the texture but it is better if you let it thaw a couple minutes. I am not sure why it took me so long to try this given how much I like frozen grapes. However I think it is really good. I had a couple of those during the day for snacks. They are like the chocolate covered bananas only healthier.

I ended up taking it easy by reading and drinking green tea much of the day. Sometimes you need a good lazy day to regenerate. By the end of the day I was feeling much more like myself not to mention less stressed.

Dinner last night was a very easy affair. I wasn’t in the mood for cooking so I decided to make a quick salad and soup. Dan loves it when I make miso and mirin dressing so that was what went on the salad last night. It was baby spinach, fresh pineapple, blackberries, miso mirin dressing and sliced almonds. It was a good salad and took no time at all to make.

I had some fresh chanterelle mushrooms in the refrigerator so I decided to use those in the soup. Any mushroom would do but chanterelles were just what I had on hand. Here is what I did:

Chanterelle Mushroom Soup
Serves 2

Ingredients:

½ red onion, peeled and finely diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 stalk of celery, very thinly sliced
1/3 pound fresh chanterelle mushrooms cut into bite sized pieces
4 cups water
¼ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon mustard powder
1/8 teaspoon ginger powder
½ tablespoon white miso (I kept this down due to the sodium content)
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
black pepper to taste
1 roasted red pepper, finely diced
¼ cup fresh parsley, finely minced

Directions:

Combine the onion, garlic, celery, mushrooms, water, turmeric, mustard and ginger. Cook until the veggies are tender. Now take some of the cooking liquid and dissolve the miso and nutritional yeast and add that to the pot. Turn off the heat and add the red pepper and parsley. Serve immediately. If you like your soup thicker you can add a little cornstarch slurry (start with 1 tablespoon) to give the soup a little thickness.

Nutritional information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 99.41
Calories From Fat (10%) - 10.24

Total Fat - 0.83g
Saturated Fat - 0.12g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 149.08mg
Potassium - 502.59mg
Total Carbohydrates - 12.9g
Fiber - 3.37g
Sugar - 0.73g
Protein - 3.46g

Comments:

I was trying to make a broth that had a “chicken-like flavor”. It is somewhat reminiscent of chicken but is definitely not the same it does taste good though. I added the roasted red pepper and parsley for nutrition. Dan wasn’t crazy about the bell pepper component but I liked it. To be fair Dan isn’t crazy about the texture of roasted peppers ever so that may be the issue. The next time I make something like this I might wilt in some fresh spinach at the end instead of the peppers since he likes that in soup. If you want to make this soup more substantial it would be great with some cooked wild rice.

Given our light dinner I am sure you aren’t surprised to hear that Dan “needed” strawberry banana soft serve again last night. I swear he could eat this stuff every single night, he really loves it. When we run low on frozen bananas it becomes a crisis at our house as you can imagine.

Happy thoughts:

• It was so nice to have sunshine all today (Wednesday). It was also great to not need Tylenol today for my knee. Have I said recently how unpleasant aging can be? ;-) However my friend Louis always reminds me that aging beats the alternative and he has a point. Being alive is good even if your knee hurts.

• I found four books on-line at the library that I put on hold. I am trying to use or local library more often rather than the one near Wegman’s. It has the added benefit of getting more steps in as well as not needing to drive which you know I love. The books are my favorite topics, cooking and health. They are being shipped to my local library branch now so with a little luck I can walk to the library tomorrow to pick them up.

• Dinner tonight included a very nice salad of cooked chanterelles, fresh parsley, tomatoes and walnuts. This turned out really well. I am excited to share it with you tomorrow. I was so good it may have to go on my Thanksgiving table. Yes, I liked it that much. ;-)

Signing Out:

I am trying to log out earlier these days to shift the sleep schedule at our house. If we are going to be at the gym at 6am we need to get into bed much earlier than is typical here. Something tells me it take us a few weeks be fully functional that early in the morning.

I hope all of you had a wonderful day. Talk to you again tomorrow.