Cracker Jack Soup

I really like peanut butter.

I also really like coconut milk.

Caramel corn makes me smile.

And soup is probably my favourite thing in the world to eat. Especially from September to May when I make a batch of soup on a weekly basis.

I love soup.

So I definitely didn’t object when Matt requested this soup while we were planning our dinners for the week. I made it right away on Sunday. . . I didn’t even wait for the week to start.

This recipe is similar to the Peanut Butter and Curried Squash Soup that I have made in the past but has a bit more of a mellow taste and a lighter texture (compared to the heavy curried flavour and thick creaminess of the curried pb soup). It’s simple, but it’s delicious.

I like the nutty peanut butter flavour mixed with the spicy cayenne and the sweet caramel corn.

All the flavours just seem to sing together. (I know, that line super cheesy but in my head I just picture an animated peanut, hot pepper, and caramel corn kernel holding song books and singing together. Like at the philharmonic or something . . . And they’re being directed by a coconut maestro . . .Okay this is getting out of hand)

Cracker Jack Soup

This recipe was adapted from the Bob Blumer book that I bought at Borders. It’s good even without the cracker jacks (or crunch ‘n munch, as I used here) but the addition of the sweet crunchy popcorn just gives it a little extra pop of flavour.

makes 8 cups (or so)

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
3 stalks celery, chopped
5 cups vegetable stock
3/4 cup canned coconut milk
1 cup all natural peanut butter
Salt
Cayenne pepper
Cracker Jacks or Crunch ‘n Munch, for garnish

Directions

Heat oil over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and sweet potato. Cook for 15 minutes until all the vegetables are softened, stirring occasionally.

Turn up the heat and add in the stock, coconut milk and peanut butter. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer for 20 minutes. Puree the soup with an immersion blender until smooth (or puree in a standard blender, but allow it too cool slightly before doing so).

Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

Serve topped with cracker jacks or crunch ‘n munch or whatever caramel corn you fancy.

Rustic Cabbage and Barley Soup with Apple

It’s been a few weeks since I made a soup. With Matt being sick with some type of virus or another he requested soup. I was happy to oblige considering the huge head of cabbage in the fridge and the fact that Matt considers a can of “sirloin burger” chunky soup to provide adequate fluids and nutrition to a sick body. Seriously? Sirloin Burger? Dude, no.

Since I missed out on grocery shopping over the weekend I headed to Freshco after work today and came out with a cart full of produce… a week’s worth of food for only $40. Per-fect.

So I put together this really hearty and delicious cabbage soup for Matt.

Rustic Cabbage and Barley Soup with Apple

(makes ~8 cups)

Ingredients
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup chopped celery hearts and leaves
1 large russett potato, peeled and chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
2 small apples peeled and chopped
2 T oil
1/4 c flour
10 cups water
1 beef bouillon cube
1 T dried parsley
4 c coarsely shredded cabbage
1/4 c uncooked barley
1 T paprika
2 bay leaves
2 T fresh thyme leaves
1/4 c tomato paste
1/4 t fennel seeds
Salt & pepper to taste (~a tablespoon of each)

Directions
In a large pot heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the onion, celery, potato, carrot and apple and sauté until soft.
Stir in flour and cook for 1-2 minutes
Then add the remaining ingredients, bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer covered for at least 30 minutes or up to an hour.
Remove bay leaves.

and a huge ass carrot that I had intended for the soup. I wasn’t even hungry.

…but leftover soup makes the best lunches so I know what I’ll be having all week!

I did find room for this though:

Look familiar?

That’s the coconut cake that my sister Victoria made for my birthday

It’s the best cake I’ve ever eaten in my life. Honestly, it’s amazing. It’s some sort of heavenly combination of a million and a half layers of coconut cake separated by some insanely delicious frosting. I really can’t say enough about the amazingness that is this cake.

I gave a slice to Matt and he loved it, of course. His criticism was that it had too many layers. I’ve never heard of too many layers on a cake. That’s blasphemy! Clearly his sickness has made him delusional.

Naturally it wasn’t my plan to eat coconut cake for dinner, so I need to be proactive and prevent myself from falling into that pit again tomorrow, and Wednesday, and Thursday, etc, etc, etc, until the cake is gone. I decided to plan out my meals in advance for tomorrow so that this doesn’t happen again. I’ll check back with you tomorrow to let you know if I actually ate what I list here:

Say it/Eat it

Breakfast: Poached Egg on Ciabatta Toast with Dijon mustard and mixed greens.
Morning Lunch: Strawberry Banana Smoothie
Afternoon Lunch: Leftover Cabbage Soup
Snack: Dates and Almonds
Dinner: West African Spinach with Groundnuts
Dessert: Sliver of Coconut Cake.

Yeah, I eat lunch twice. It’s the highlight of my work day, not gonna lie.

Food Blog Friday: New Year Noodle Soup

(source)

This week’s Food Blog Friday recipe comes from the gorgeous 101 Cookbooks. It is a spiced bean and noodle soup that blogger Heidi Swanson claims to be the “perfect recipe to usher in the new year with”. New Year Noodle Soup.

The exotic East Indian ingredients like chile pepper, turmeric, and cumin are what caught my eye and enticed me to make this recipe (plus it’s a soup and I fucking love soup. Yeah, I love it that much.)

The recipe calls for borlotti beans which, I admit, I had never even heard of before. I substituted them with canned romano beans. Funnily enough, after a quick google of “borlotti beans” at the time of this writing I learned that they actually are romano beans, so that was a stroke of good luck.

Another substitution that I made was thin rice noodles instead of egg noodles because they are what I had on hand.

This recipe turned out to be fantastic. The heat from the spices and hot pepper was balanced by the acidity of the lime and the cool fresh herbs. Reading the recipe, I found the inclusion of dill to be rather curious, but it actually worked really well and was perhaps my favourite addition.

The soup is to be topped with creme fraiche, caramelized onions, and walnuts but I opted out of the the topping out to keep the recipe vegan. I thought the recipe worked even without the inclusion of the topping although the next time that I make this one I think that I would use the topping just to see the difference. I imagine that it would further balance the heat and also bring a sweetness that the New Year Noodle Soup is otherwise lacking.

All in all I loved this recipe and would definitely make it again, no substitutions. I give it

3 Spoons!

Find the recipe for 101 Cookbooks New Year Noodle Soup here.

0 spoons – That was fucking horrendous
1 spoon  –  I doubt I’ll be making that again
2 spoons – I’ll probably make that again with some tweaks
3 spoons – That was perfect.

day 180: back at it

You can’t say no to food when you’re on vacation. Maybe it’s possible, but it’s just wrong. How often am I going to have buttery clam chowder on the Atlantic? or creamy vintage hot chocolate in Montreal? On vacation it’s like every day is a special occasion and each of those 9 special occasions add up to one pimply and bloated Samantha.

Even though I broke up with my scale I confess that did go back to him, and it wasn’t pretty. But I’m not here to dwell on the numbers (almost 6 months of work lost in just over a week, fyi), I’m just here to tell you all that I’m getting back to my normal routine of eating right and exercising.

I had a great workout today with my cousin who’s reason for getting into bikini shape is probably more valid than my own; she’s moving to Grenada in a few weeks. Here’s what we did:

Treadmill: 30 minutes, 3.5 miles

4 sets of 5-8 reps

• Plyometric Pushups
• Incline Dumbbell Press (40 lb)
• Wide Grip Lat Pulldown (180 lb)
• Reverse Flys (90 lb)
• Iso-Lateral Low Rows (160 lb)
• Hammer Bicep Curls (30 lb)
• Machine Tricep Extensions (135 lb)

Last night in celebration of our anniversary I made Matt a very simple bowl of comfort food: Bread Soup. It was the perfect solution to our stale bread, desire to celebrate low key, and craving for something hearty.

Bread Soup

Ingredients

• 1 red onion, sliced
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1 white potato, cubed
• 1 enormous zucchini, cubed
• 5 dried shiitake mushrooms, chopped
• 1.5 cups fresh herbs (I used sage, basil, thyme, parsley)
• 4 thick slices of stale Italian bread, soaked briefly in water
• 1 dried hot chili pepper
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Add all the veggies to a pot (not herbs) and cover with about 8 cups of cold water. Bring to a boil.

Reduce to medium low. Add 1 cup of the herbs (reserve the rest for garnish) to the soup and let simmer for 25 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Add the chile pepper and salt and pepper to taste. Crumble the soaked bread into the soup and stir until the bread thickens the soup (about 10 minutes).

Serve with herbs and drizzled with olive oil.

We finished off the night by watching Couples Retreat (Did anyone else see that and wonder why it wasn’t very funny?) and drinking the Muscedere ice wine that I bought at the Sip Into Summer wine tasting.

Liquid Gold.

day 35: root veggies

Lately I’ve been eating a lot of these guys:

Parsnips! Oh so tasty, crunchy, and awesome. These bad boys have more potassium than carrots– good for keeping the workout cramps at bay.
Raw parsnips + hummus = great pre-workout snack.
I like the sweet and somewhat nutty taste of them. Last week I ate through a pound of parsnips so I bought them in bulk this week!

Interesting factoid: In the Middle Ages, especially during Lent, Europeans favored the parsnip because of its flavour, nourishment and ability to satisfy hunger through meatless fasting periods.

… so ’tis the season, I suppose.

Tonight I dove into new root veggie territory: Celeriac

Inspired by Kenzie’s Veggie Love post and a recipe from my naturopath, Matt and I team-cooked a tasty cannellini bean soup with celery root. I tried a bit of it raw while I was chopping it and I liked the taste of it– it tasted like celery, but nutty where celery is salty. It was a really good addition to the soup!

Celery Root and White Bean Soup

Ingredients

1 can cannellini beans
1 tbsp olive oil
1 leek, sliced
1 carrot, diced
1 celery root, diced
3 cloves garlic
3 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme
1 tsp salt
cracked black pepper to taste
1 c. brown rice pasta shells

Directions

Saute the garlic and leeks in the olive oil in a large pan until leeks are soft. Add 6 c. water and all the other ingredients except pasta shells. Simmer for about 20 minutes until the veggies are soft and the soup is flavourful. Add the pasta and simmer another 12-15 minutes.

Day 15: still the same

Okay, so I had no progress this week. I actually took a step backward: +0.3% body fat, +0.8lb Boo

So I failed on my goals to lose 1lb and 0.5% body fat. Looking back at my caloric intake, I was eating 1900 cal per day instead of 1700 as I had planned. I did eat more vegetables and less fruit but it didn’t seem to help very much.

I feel a bit like Melissa on last night’s Biggest Loser. What did I do wrong?

This week I plan to be more strict about my calorie intake — this is going to take a bit more planning than I’m used to (primarily because I’m not used to planning). Also I’m restricting myself to 1 tbsp per day of peanut butter. This sounds like a lot, but I eat A LOT of peanut butter. I probably don’t need all that fat.

In other news…

Last night for dinner I made my famous potato leek soup. Famous to me and my husband, at least. …And I’m giving up the recipe:

Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 3 leeks chopped (white part only)
• 1/2 a red onion chopped
• 3 cloves garlic minced
• 2 new potatoes cubed
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2 bay leaves

(Yesterday I also added a can of white kidney beans, which I don’t normally add– the taste honestly didn’t change much)

Directions

Heat the oil in over medium high heat in a large saucepan.
Add the leeks, onions, and garlic and cook until the leeks are soft and the onions are transparent.
Add the potatoes and add just enough water to cover them. Stir in the salt, pepper, turmeric, thyme, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil. Reduce to low heat to simmer for 40 minutes. (If adding beans, I added them after 20-25 minutes.)
Using an immersion blender blend the soup to a smooth consistency, adding more water if necessary. (I like my soup really thick, so I never have to add extra water.)