soup

Loaded Light Baked Potato Soup

categories: 500 Calories or Less, Posts, Recipes

 

Ah, the holidays. Cookies, cakes, 5-course dinners, drinks, parties. It’s the perfect time to throw your diet out the window and eat everything in sight, right? Wrong. It seems to be the endless Holiday cycle – starting with Thanksgiving where we go with the all-you-can eat mentality up through New Year’s Day. Then, it’s back to everyone’s favorite resolution, “this year I’m going to lose weight,” when you start eating lettuce again and fighting for a treadmill and space in your Zumba and Kick-Boxing classes. (more…)

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Broccoli Cheese Soup

categories: 500 Calories or Less, Posts, Recipes, Soups

 

One of my favorite soups at Panera, is their broccoli cheese soup. Some days, usually in the winter, I like to indulge in a bowl of Panera’s broccoli cheese soup … in a bread bowl. And yes, I eat the whole bread bowl too. Unfortunately, those indulgences lead to the small needle on my scale tipping in the wrong direction the next morning. But every woman should indulge in food, every once in a while. I try to keep from ordering the bread bowl unless it’s a serious emergency. And by emergency, I mean having the bread bowl rather than eating practically everything with carbs at home. Who’s to say I don’t balance everything out by having lettuce for dinner, or foregoing dinner altogether. (more…)

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Skinny Corn Chowder

categories: 500 Calories or Less, Posts, Recipes, Soups

 

It’s Ramadan, that month on the lunar calendar when you can’t have food, water, or gum from sunrise to sunset. It’s also a month when you’re supposed to concentrate on other things besides food, being a better person, getting closer to your faith, etc. While all that’s true, I find more and more that Ramadan is really All About the Food. We’ve received numerous dinner invites, even a few weeks before Ramadan even started. With the long days (16 hours, give or take), all I can think about is food. What happens, is that although I’ve been eying the sweets in the fridge, or thinking about burgers, dinner time rolls around and I can’t down more than soup and salad. Go figure. All those cravings for nothing. It makes sense, you’re stomach contracts when you’re fasting so you can’t stuff it like you usually do. Unless you’re one of those people that doesn’t mind the uncomfortable feeling of being so full you need to unbutton the top button on your jeans and lay down until you fall asleep. (more…)

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Freekeh Soup [Green Wheat Soup]

categories: 500 Calories or Less, Arabic Food Made Easy, Posts, Recipes, Soups

Freekeh-Soup

In an attempt to curb a cold, I thought whipping up some soup might do the trick. I’m pretty sick of chicken noodle soup. So I decided to try something different. Freekeh.

For those who don’t know what Freekeh is … it’s not freaky. It’s basically a type of green wheat that goes through a roasting process in its production. It’s very healthy and very popular in the areas of the Levant, Arabian Peninsula and found in North African and Egyptian cuisine.

Freekeh Soup

 

Print
Freekeh Soup [Green Wheat Soup]

Yield: 6 Servings

Ingredients

  • 3 pieces Skinless Chicken Breast
  • Water
  • 1 Onion, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon Seven Spice
  • Salt, to taste
  • 1 tablespoon Olive Oil
  • 1 cup Freekeh

Instructions

  1. Prepare the chicken stock by sauteeing the onion with olive oil in a medium saucepan until translucent.
  2. Add the chicken and cover with water (to desired amount). Add salt to taste and boil for about 20 minutes.
  3. Drain. Do not discard the chicken water. Set it aside.
  4. Meanwhile, pick out the stones from the freekeh, wash with lukewarm water and then soak in water until ready.
  5. In a medium saucepan, boil the freekeh with fresh water. Once the water is absorbed, add the chicken stock and simmer on medium-low until the freekeh is soft.
    6. Tip: Don't discard the boiled chicken. You can bake it in the oven (with veggies if you so desire) on 350 degrees for 20 minutes and serve with the soup.

Notes

Nutrition Information: Cals 106. Carbs 2g, Fat 1g. Protein 1g. Sodium 58mg.

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Chicken Noodle Soup for the Sick of Being Sick Soul

categories: Posts, Recipes, Soups

All year, I work to try to avoid this very thing – getting sick. And I’m not talking cough, sniffle, sneeze sick, I’m talking shivers, trouble swallowing, ear aching, nose won’t stop running even though you blew it dry, sick.  Let me tell you, it sucks.

I felt it coming on late Monday, after I spent my whole day (starting at 6:45am) on site at a client conference.  Then, bam! Tuesday morning I woke up with half a sore throat, an aching ear and an inability to swallow anything with a consistency more solid than mashed potatoes.

Blame it on the change in weather – which by the way, is amazing at the moment but I can’t enjoy it because I’m home, sick as a dog, working while laying on the couch with the TV off. What frustrates me is that I can’t do anything about it. After seeing my doctor. Pure luck that I scheduled an appointment for yesterday. She broke the news to me. “It looks like you have a virus.” Dum dum dum. My world came crashing down. A virus? How in the world did that happen? I wash my hands, eat well, make sure I stay away from sick people, and yet … I have been diagnosed by the professional. The only good news is that she put me on a Z-Pak, a five-day antibiotic treatment whose powers are so great that hopefully it will have me feeling better before the long weekend rolls around.

Between email and projects, I’ve managed to create a giant pile of Kleenex and also make myself some really easy chicken noodle soup.

Why chicken noodle soup? You might ask. Well, a handful of scientific studies show that chicken soup really could have medicinal value. A study published in 2000 in the medical journal Chest by Dr. Stephen Rennard of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha found that chicken noodle soup helps reduce upper respiratory cold symptoms by inhibiting the migration neutrophils, infection-fighting cells.

Dr. Rennard conducted lab tests to determine why chicken soup might help colds, starting with his wife’s homemade recipe. The recipe was handed down by her Lithuanian grandmother. Using blood samples from volunteers, he showed that the soup inhibited the movement of neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell that defends against infection.  To find out more about Dr. Rennard’s findings, visit http://www.unmc.edu/chickensoup/index.htm

So here’s my chicken noodle soup recipe. Mostly made of food I had in my fridge (not much really).

 

 

Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

Ingredients

2 Chicken Breasts
2 large Carrots
1 Medium Onion, chopped
2 Red Potatoes, chopped
1 box Low Sodium Chicken Broth
1  ½ cups Thin Spaghetti, broken in half
Olive Oil
Salt to taste
Oregano to taste
 
 

Directions

Boil chicken breasts for 20 minutes, drain water.
Cut chicken into small squares, or shreds
Sauté onion with 1 tablespoon (I used 2 swirls) olive oil until translucent
Add carrots and potatoes, sauté for 2 minutes.
Add chicken broth
Add noodles
Add chicken
Stir carefully as not to break the noodles.
Let boil once it boils, add salt and oregano to taste
Allow the soup to continue boiling on low-medium for another 20 minutes.
 

Serve with a box of Kleenex and a warm blanket.

Long Day Lentil Soup

categories: Posts, Recipes, Soups

Staffing a 6:45am conference on a Monday, preceded by staffing the first night of the conference on Sunday night, is not my idea of a perfect start to the week. That’s not to say I’m not a positive person. However, leaving before the sun rises puts a little bit of a damper on even my positive attitude.

For those who care to know, the conference went well. There were lots of attendees, I helped promote my firm (the one I work for – you know, my day job), and I met some very interesting professionals. As the afternoon came to a close, the only thing I wanted to do was get home, get into my sweats and have warm soup. Once I turned on Bravo and watched 10 minutes of The Real Housewives of New Jersey – don’t judge me, you secretly watch mindless, trashy television too – I was ready to get my soup on. Long Day Lentil Soup, or at least that’s what I’m calling it today. Disclaimer I might not have gotten it 100% right the way she does it, I made a few modifications. The Long Day Lentil Soup, however, hit the spot. It was just what I needed to unwind. I squeezed some lemon juice, and sprinkled some Stacy’s Pita Chips on top. Yum.

 

 

 

Long Day Lentil Soup Recipe 

Ingredients

1 Onion, chopped
2 cups Red Lentils
1-2 teaspoons Cumin
1/4 teaspoons Turmeric
Diced Baby Carrots
Salt to taste
Vegetable Oil
 
 

Directions

Check lentils for stones, removing the stones.
Wash the lentils in water 3-4 times (add water, drain, add water, drain, etc.)
Fry 1 onion in vegetable oil until golden
Add lentils, stir
Add water covering the lentils over an inch
Add 1-2 teaspoons cumin and 1/4 tsp turmeric
Add diced carrots baby and Salt
Once it boils, turn to medium heat- keep stirring. If the mixture is thick, add water.
After simmering for 15 minutes,  remove from heat and puree in blender. To keep the thickness of the soup, only puree for a couple seconds. 
 

Serve with squeezed lemon juice.