Quick & Easy Black Bean Soup

Don't have a lot of time but would love to have some throw together meals in the fridge for the upcoming week? You'll love this one.

It's easy to keep ingredients on hand to throw this together at a moment's notice, and fast to prepare with little to no chopping, because sometimes, you just need a break. Am I right?

Today, Mother's Day was just one of those days. Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day!

This recipe is adapted from The Fast Black Bean Soup recipe in Dr. Fuhrman's book, Eat for Health. Can you tell I love this book? It's also on his website: Dr.Furhman.com

Here we are using some frozen veggies, black beans and even a low salt black bean soup for the base. Carrot juice and tomatoes round out the collection of flavors. If you are worried about the frozen veggies, know that while fresh is always best, little nutrients are lost in the freezing process and in some cases it might be easier to find organic produce this way.

Plus this is for those times when you need something ready to go with little fuss and the taste is worth it. This makes about 5 healthy servings.

Ingredients:

2 15-ounce cans of black beans, no or low salt, and strained and well rinsed (to remove salt)

2 cups frozen mixed vegetables

2 cups frozen corn

2 cups frozen broccoli florets

2 cups carrot juice

1 15-ounce can prepared black bean soup, low to no salt.

1 cup water

1 cup fresh tomato, chopped

1/4 cup cilantro

1/8 teaspoon chili powder

Optional toppings:

1 avocado, chopped or mashed

1/2 cup green onions, chopped

1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds

Note: you will probably have some left over veggies so just defrost them and add them to your salads, a wrap or a pita for a little more variety.

Quick and Easy Black Bean Soup

Directions:

Combine beans, all the frozen vegetables, carrot juice, water, soup, cilantro and chili powder in a soup pot. Bring to boil and then reduce to simmer on low for 30 minutes.

Stir in chopped fresh tomato and heat through for a few minutes.

Serve topped with avocado, green onions and pumpkin seeds if using.

This soup pairs very well with a fresh green salad. A simple, and healthy lunch or dinner ready to go.

So there you have it. Fast, easy and healthy to boot.

Enjoy!

Until next time… 

Hearty Ginger Lentil Soup

Welcome to another edition of Super Soup Sunday!

I can't believe it's been a full week already but here we are. And what a week it was. I spent it helping an elderly neighbor who had a bad fall and ended up in the hospital. If you ever want a reminder of why it is so important to take care of our health now, at whatever age you are at, spend some time with a senior or for more of a reminder, spend time in a hospital where seniors are the majority. It is not a pretty sight. My friend is home now, and family has arrived from out of town to take over the care. But it has reinforced my resolve to not be dependent on our healthcare system and eat my veggies!

But enough about that. Let's talk food!

This recipe is another from Dr. Fuhrman's book, Eat For Health,

the same book I mentioned in the last post. It is also posted in his newsletters and on his member website at www.DrFurhman.com, which if I am loving! 

As a member on his site, I have access to a community that have been following this program and some for years and they have so much to share. There are some truly amazing success stories there. The other thing I really am enjoying is the direct access to Dr. Fuhrman for any questions I may have. His staff, including other MDs are readily available for input as well. Between them and all the previous discussions, webinars, podcasts, and newsletters just about every possible issue is covered in full. There are over 1000 recipes in there as well. It's a true wealth of information and well worth the monthly fee. If you are serious about regaining your health, and wanting to transition to a nutrient based way of eating, I would highly recommend it.

Now on to this delicious soup.

This Hearty Ginger Soup has already become a favorite in our house. 

It's very nutrient dense, flavorful, and as the name implies- hearty! I think it took me half an hour the other day to finish my bowl for lunch! Ginger plays a major roll, along with lentils, brown rice, sweet potatoes and a hefty amount of swiss chard, to name a few of the key flavors. Instead of vegetable broth, carrot juice is the liquid base, which just ups the nutrients as well as the flavor. I chose to purchase the juice to save some time but if you are game, juice the carrots yourself. 

Also it calls for Dr. Fuhrman's Veggie Zest, which is a no salt dried vegetable seasoning. You can use a substitute like Bragg's or Mrs. Dash but do not use the same amounts listed in the recipe. I tried this with Mrs. Dash on another soup and it was so full of pepper it was basically inedible. So I decided to break down and buy Dr. Fuhrman's Vegizest to get it right for future recipes, including this one.

This recipe requires some time for chopping so be prepared time wise. It's definitely worth it as I believe we got 12 big servings out of this recipe and it freezes well.

Ingredients:

8 cups carrot juice

4 cups of water

1 cup dried lentils ( do not soak)

1/2 cup uncooked brown rice

2 zucchinis, finely chopped

2 carrots, finely chopped

1 red bell pepper, finely chopped

1 onion, finely diced.

2 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced

2 bunches swiss chard leaves and stems, chopped

6 cloves garlic, peeled, minced and pressed 

3 tablespoons grated fresh ginger root
3 tablespoons Dr. Fuhrman's Vegi-zest or equivalent to taste. (thanks to reader Angie for catching this.)

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/8 teaspoon allspice

1/2 cup fresh parsely chopped, for garnish

Place all but the sweet potatoes, swiss chard and parsley in soup pot. Bring to a boil then cover and simmer about 40 minutes.

Add potatoes and simmer another 15 minutes.

Add chard and simmer for 10 more minutes.

Serve topped with  chopped parsley.

Carrots and zucchini (I just realized I peeled the zucchini for some reason- not necessary.)

Grated ginger and garlic and cubed sweet potatoes

The recipe calls for Swiss chard but I'm a sucker for the vibrant colors of Rainbow chard. One of these days I'll have to make myself buy Swiss chard.

Final soup close up. Hope you give it a try. It's really worth it. 

Let me know if you try the carrots as a soup base and if you do the juicing yourself. 

Until next time,

 Eat Your Veggies!

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Baby Ruby Salad with Blood Orange Cashew Dressing

A baby greens salad with blood orange sections, strawberries, dried apricots, pistachios in a blood orange cashew dressing.

This post is dedicated to my lovely niece, Claire who asked me the other day what to do with the baby kale she just bought. First of all let me just tell you how excited I am that she bought kale in the first place. She is a young mother with two precious little ones and she actually is making green smoothies for them now.... with kale! Woot Woot! and little  2 1/2 year old Victor is asking for "more." Love it!

See it's really adults that freak out over green looking drinks in the beginning, not the kids.

So this is a recipe I put together when I stumbled across a new looking container in our store:

Baby Kale Medley

I am really partial to tender baby greens, and this baby kale medley is no exception. It's not as hard core as the big leaf kale, in case you are new to the more powerhouse greens.  And also because it's a baby leaf, you don't have to worry about bitter stems, like the full leaves.

While you may not have a Sprouts/ Henry's Farmer's Market where you live, I think baby kale is catching on in the stores, especially ones like Whole Foods.

But if not, any baby greens (spinach or romaine) would work fine and mix them up for more variety too if you feel like it.

Raw Coconut Vinegar

I also stumbled across this new-to-me product:
Raw Organic Coconut Vinegar by Coconut Secret,
which claims to be even more nutritious than organic apple cider vinegar, so I decided to give it a spin for something different.  I do like it.

So this recipe I'm about to share moves away from oils in the salad dressing. Since I am new to this idea,  I turned to Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book, Eat For Health for recipe ideas.

I LOVE this book as it covers not just the nutritional research side and lots of recipes but also explores the emotional component of food addictions and how to stop their control over our diets.

This book was just recently republished from what I have as a two book set into a single paperback.  Highly recommend!

Dr. Furhman is an advocate of a low fat diet but is a big fan of using nuts (in limited amounts) in the diet for the good fats and benefits. His research shows that nuts are especially beneficial to consume with greens, as they help you to absorb more nutrients from them. So his plan is to use the nuts in place of oils in salad dressing and not as snacks.

So that's what I did. This recipe is adapted from Dr. Fuhrman's MishMash Salad with Orange Cashew Dressing in Eat For Health.

Baby Ruby Salad

Baby Ruby Salad with a Blood Orange Cashew Dressing

I decided to call it this because of the baby greens, and then because of the beautiful ruby colors of the blood oranges and the berries. Dr. Fuhrman's recipe calls for using his Blood Orange Vinegar but since I did not have any, I decided to go for the real thing and add the blood oranges directly to the salad and in the dressing.

Baby Ruby Salad Ingredients

Ingredients:

Blood Orange Cashew Dressing:

2 blood oranges (regular is fine too), peeled and seeded

1/4 cup cashews

2 tablespoons organic vinegar (apple cider vinegar, like Bragg's would be good too)

2 carrots grated (for sweetness) 

orange juice (optional)

Salad:

1 container of baby kale medley or mixed greens of choice
1 cup of blood orange sections
1 cup sliced organic strawberries (organic is important as these are like little sponges for pesticides.)
1/4 cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons raw pistachio nuts, unsalted and shelled

Directions:

Blend dressing ingredients in a high power blender until smooth and creamy. This should be fine in a regular blender too. It may just take a bit longer to get creamy. Add some orange juice if necessary to thin it a bit.

Toss salad ingredients in a big bowl and use dressing to taste. Extra dressing should keep in a covered container in the fridge for 3-5 days.

Baby Ruby Salad Close Up

So there you have it. A lovely and colorful salad brimming with all the goodness of kale and other greens but in tender bites. I'm a sucker for the ruby color of the veins in the swiss chard. 

I hope you give it a try.  Do you use nuts in your dressing to replace oil? It gives it a creamy texture don't you think? Would love to hear from you.

Until next time, Happy Healthy Eating.

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