Meatless Monday: Vegetable Minestrone

February 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Some days you just know that Monday night is going to be a little rough.  That’s when the good old slow cooker is worth its weight in gold!  So this Monday, we’ve pulled out our trusty copy of Fix-It and Forget-It Lightly and have made a Vegetable Minestrone.  The thing that annoys me about so many slow cooker recipes is all of the cooking that they sometimes require before tossing it in.  Let’s be honest, if I had time to cook, I wouldn’t be using my slow cooker.  This recipe has you just toss everything, except for the pasta, right in and turn it on.  After you add in the pasta and let it finish, you just ladle it into a bowl and eat.  How hard is that?

Vegetable Minestrone

In order to make this recipe vegan, we used a low-sodium vegetable broth, but because we needed to keep our protein levels up on a vegan diet, we added one can of drained white beans.  I also don’t keep dried basil on hand, but I do have Italian seasoning, so I subbed that for the basil and oregano.  On top of that, we didn’t have rotini, but we thought that the kids would like the bag of wacky shapes pasta that we had.  It was fun to watch them searching for the shells and wheels as they gobbled up this yummy soup.

Ingredients

4 C low-fat, low-sodium chicken broth
4 C low-sodium tomato juice
1 Tbsp. dried basil
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. black pepper
2 medium-sized carrots, sliced
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 C fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
28-oz can low-sodium diced tomatoes
1 1/2 C uncooked rotini pasta

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients except pasta in slow cooker.

2. Cover. Cook on low 7-8 hours.

3. Add pasta.

4. Cover. Cook on high 15-20 minutes.

That’s it!  An easy vegan dinner customized for our needs and what we have available on hand.  I’m pretty sure that no one will miss the meat in this delicious, comforting soup.

Have a Meatless Monday experience, recipe, or request?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re up to!

Meatless Monday, a national nonprofit public health initiative, is all about incorporating more vegetables and less meat into our diet.  It’s about moderation, just one day a week, cutting down on meats high in saturated fat and increasing protein-rich plant-based foods — good for personal health and good for the planet.

 

If you are interested in owning a copy of Fix-It and Forget-It Lightly of your own, Amazon has great prices.  Check them out here:

 

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Bertolli’s Weeknight Meal Special Challenge

February 2, 2012 By 2 Comments

We got an opportunity to try out Bertolli’s newest product, their Meal Soups.  We have, for some time now, loved Bertolli products.  We have tried frozen meals, sauces, and olive oils, and we are always pleased with whatever we get.  So the chance to try out something new was a pretty exciting prospect.  One problem…all of the meal soups contain meat and Beth and I are right in the middle of our diet challenge for the start of the new year.  What that means more than anything else is that I cannot specifically tell you what the soup tastes like.  I can tell you, however, that, after seeing and smelling the results, both of us were just about ready to trash everything we had done for the past month and dive into that bowl of soup!

We picked up the Tomato Florentine and Tortellini with Chicken, thinking that our kids like pasta, chicken, and tomato soup.  It stood to reason that they would enjoy a soup that included all three.  You see, one of the biggest troubles that we’ve had with this diet is that we cannot reasonably expect our kids to be eating the way that we are right now.  We get them to try way more than anyone would ever think of introducing to kiddos this little, but they just aren’t always on board.  So cooking a meal that is healthy for us and another that is healthy for them and fills up everyone’s bellies can be pretty tough.

That’s where this meal soup fit in.  It took 10-15 minutes from freezer to done and really took the guesswork out of making sure that everyone was fed.  The girls ate everything all up and were even sopping up some of the soup with their bread.  Admittedly, the price was a little high for our budget at over $8 for two servings.  I’m used to making this sort of thing myself at a much cheaper price.  However, when I consider that I did not have to make that huge pot of something that I can’t eat and that my kids went to bed with full tummies…well, the price seems pretty cheap.  Really, I was paying for my time and for my trouble and, if you think about it, to get a soup like that at a restaurant, would easily cost you $10 for just one serving.  That’s quite the bargain in the grand scheme of things.

To make the night a little special, we set the table up nicely (it’s good to do this regularly so that the kids learn about good manners at the table) and gave everyone real cups (another thing to do on a regular basis for “training” purposes).  To speed things up even just a little bit, I would suggest covering your pot from the outset.  Sealing that heat in helps the water come to a boil that much faster.  You do have to watch it, though, and turn it down as soon as it comes to a boil.  Otherwise, it could easily boil over and make a huge mess.  That’s definitely not good for a special night!  Here are some pictures of our meal and our good eating girls (notice that Matthew is missing…his dinner’s have become hit or miss lately).

Could you use some help feeding your little ones while you continue to work on your New Year’s resolutions?  Leave us a comment and let us know.

You can find Bertolli on Facebook, Twitter, and their website.

I was compensated by Bertolli to participate in the Weeknight Meal Special Challenge.

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Pin It Tuesday #Pinterest – Soup’s Up!

January 10, 2012 By 5 Comments

Are you addicted to Pinterest like I am? I have to pull myself away so I was excited to see this meme! Want more details? Find them here:

Crazy About My Baybah
Yesterday on Pinterest I made a “Soup – It’s for Dinner” board. I saw a Henrietta’s Soup board and was inspired! Soup is most of our dinners in our meal plan this week so it has been on my mind to say the least. Now some of these are cheese and meat versions which we aren’t eating right now but soon enough we will … so here are some of the Soup – It’s For Dinner ideas!

Tomato Soup from howdoesshe.com

Mushroom Soup from http://blog.seasonwithspice.com/

 

Loaded Baked Potato Soup with Bread Bowls from sweettmakesthree.com

 

Lasagna Soup from afarmgirlsdabbles.com

Want to join Pinterest? Let us know in the comments, and we will send you an invite! Are you following me on Pinterest? If not, follow me so I can follow you back!!

What is your favorite pin right now? Leave me a comment and let me know!

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Meatless Monday: Two Soups at Once!

January 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

This week we thought we’d change things up a little bit.  We are still on the 2012 Whole Living Action Plan and this week we get to add beans and lentils to our diet.  As such, we were able make a couple of hearty soups to help sate those hunger pangs from last week.  We spent some time on Sunday making Red Lentil Soup and White Bean and Mushroom Stew.  These soups were quick, cheap, and easy to make.  I made them side by side and the entire process took less than an hour and a half, including all of the chopping.  That winds up being four dinners and several lunches this week.  That’s saving time and money!

The soups themselves were pretty good.  The White Bean and Mushroom Stew never really thickened up like I would have liked.  Perhaps omitting some of the water or crushing up some of the beans would have helped that out.  Make sure you season with plenty of salt and pepper.  Believe me, the soup can handle it.  The Red Lentil Soup tastes great as well, but we weren’t able to use red lentils because they were not available at our local supermarket.  So we used green lentils instead (I would suggest soaking them for a bit before cooking).  We also do not like turnips, so we substituted parsnips instead.  The changes worked out well for us.  Again, plenty of seasoning is definitely called for.

Both soups would have been markedly better with some bread or crackers to sop up and to add a textural note.  Since our diet right now does not allow that, we’ll just have to watch the kids gobble it up.  The White Bean and Mushroom Stew, in particular, was enjoyed by our girls with bread and oyster crackers.  They enjoyed it so much that they actually asked for more soup to go with their leftover crackers!

Here are some pictures of the process:

I had to keep everything separated to keep myself straight and not mix up the ingredients!

Super simple ingredients for a basic, hearty lentil soup.


Could this be any easier?

Less than ten ingredients and 45 minutes away from filling, comforting soup.


So I forgot the picture of the soup cooking with the tomato puree.  What are you gonna do?  I was just so excited about tasting it all!

Make sure you take the opportunity to try these recipes out.  With the cold creeping into your bones as winter’s chill finally rears its ugly head, these soups are sure you warm your belly.

What did you have for Meatless Monday?  Leave us a comment and let us know.

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The Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Stock to Soup to Consomme

September 14, 2011 By 13 Comments

Recently, I signed up with The Daring Kitchen to be a “Daring Cook.”  Basically, each month our host cook challenges us to recreate one recipe.  We all create basically the same thing with a few variations allowed, but we all end up with wildly different results.

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook’s September 2011 challenge, “Stock to Soup to Consommé”. We were taught the meaning between the three dishes, how to make a crystal clear Consommé if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

This challenge was right up my alley for my first time here.  I love, love, love soup.  I make stocks and broths all the time.  I always save ham bones and chicken carcasses in the freezer (seriously, I paid for them!  Why waste?).  For this challenge, I chose to create a corn stock and then use that stock to create a corn chowder.  Just in case you are wondering, yes, I do keep and freeze corn cobs just for the purpose.  If you want to know more about that, check out our post on Freezing Corn.

Corn Stock

This beautiful amber liquid smells like summer.  Use it in soups or risottos to add that little extra bit of comfort when it gets cold outside.  Make sure not to add salt to the stock.  When it reduces, it will be very salty and high in sodium.  Just add it to your final dish using the stock.

Ingredients

1 large onion
3 stalks celery
2 carrots
4 cloves garlic
2 T peppercorns
12 corn cobs
water to cover

Directions

Chop onion, celery, and carrots into large chunks.  Put into a large stockpot with next three ingredients.  Cover with water.

Bring water to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer 3 hours or until liquid is reduced by half.

Remove and discard the biggest chunks.  Pour liquid through a strainer lined with cheesecloth into another container.  Let cool before refrigerating.  Yield:  about 4 cups

Corn Chowder

This recipe is very fresh and very easy.  If you want to up the ante a little, some bacon, shrimp, or both would go well with this dish.  We served it with a side of freshly baked rosemary bread.  It soaked up the liquid beautifully.  I had the leftovers for lunch the next day in a freshly baked mini-boule.  Unfortunately, I got the better of myself and wolfed it down before I could get a picture.  The corn that I used for this recipe naturally came off of the corn cobs that I used to make the stock above.

Ingredients

2 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 C flour
4 C corn stock
2 C heavy cream
1 1/2 C peeled, diced potato
2 C fresh or frozen corn
salt and pepper
sliced green onions (optional)

Directions

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium heat.  Add onion and garlic, cooking until soft, about 10 minutes.  Add flour and stir until well combined.  Cook about 3 minutes.  Add corn stock and bring to a boil.  Add cream and potatoes and boil for 8-10 minutes.  Reduce heat, add corn, and simmer for another 10 minutes.  Ladle into bowls, garnish with green onions, and serve hot with fresh bread!

 

These two recipes are very simple, healthy, and inexpensive.  They use just a little heavy cream, some fresh produce, and a little time.  I definitely enjoyed my first challenge with The Daring Kitchen.  I look forward to future challenges.  Let me know what you think.

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