Tag Archives: soup

My awesome breakfast: supercharged oatmeal

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I’m often away from home and busy from 10 am until 6 pm. I wanted to find a breakfast to keep me energized and satiated for that period of time. I’m interested in consuming great nutrition and find most restaurants lacking.

I’ve found something that not only does that, it’s super nutritious and delicious. I haven’t measured, but the oats, seeds, soy milk, walnuts, and yogurt add protein, the walnuts, seeds, yogurt, and olive oil add fat, the yogurt adds probiotics. and it’s got carbs and plenty of fiber from the whole grains and fruit.

I cook 1 cup of organic sprouted rolled oats from One Degree as directed. I add half a teaspoon of olive oil to keep it from foaming up.

If I don’t leave the lid slightly ajar, it’s too watery, so that’s an important part of the instructions. I let it simmer for 10 minutes to get a texture that’s slightly chewy.

After the oats are cooked, I add 3 tablespoons each of flax seeds, hemp seeds, and chia seeds, as well as a teaspoon each of Ceylon cinnamon and nutmeg.

I mix it really well and put it into a covered bowl to store in the fridge.

To eat, I mash about 1/3rd of a cup of the mixture with a couple of tablespoons of organic soy milk and warm it in a small saucepan. (No microwave available.)

While it’s warming, I prepare a one-serving bowl, adding blueberries and walnuts and whatever I have of the following: dried cranberries, blackberries, soaked prunes, pomegranate seeds.

Usually it’s sweet enough without adding anything, but if I want more sweetness, I can add a little bit of the water the prunes are soaked in, which is super sweet and plumps up the prunes. I keep a jar in my fridge. I could add honey or maple syrup if I didn’t have that.

I also add about a quarter cup of yogurt to the bowl. I prefer skyr or Greek yogurt for the protein.

I combine the heated oatmeal and soy milk with the contents of the bowl and stir well.

I get about 6 servings out of one cup of oatmeal. It sustains me very well throughout the day, and when I start to feel hungry again, it’s late afternoon, and I have a light dinner.

I am slowly losing weight without much effort.

I’ve tried intermittent fasting before where I didn’t eat until mid-day, but this timing (I think of it as front-end loading) seems to work so much better for my system.

I do a lot of batch cooking because it’s less time consuming than cooking each meal from scratch. I also make legume-based dishes, like black bean soup or lentil curry, and brown or black rice, doubling or even quadrupling the ingredients to make big batches that I can freeze in meal-sized batches.

Then I simply move a couple of servings from the freezer to the fridge to thaw for 1-2 days, reheat, and voila! Super heathy, inexpensive, delicious meals.

Hot green nourishing soup

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I don’t know about you, but after the excesses of holiday eating, I’m so ready for something simple and nourishing.

I was inspired by a recent segment on The Splendid Table podcast about basic green soup.

I also am a big fan of The Soup Peddler‘s (colorful Austin vendor of soups, juices, smoothies, and more) green detox broth.

Here’s my mashup, made in an Instant Pot using an immersion blender. I now have some good simple eating for the week and some to put in the freezer.

You can easily make this vegan or Paleo using your own adaptations. Recipes are for inspiration!

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons of ghee, bacon grease, coconut oil, or olive oil
  • 2 large yellow onions, peeled and sliced
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • black pepper to taste (optional)
  • 3 cups water, vegetable broth, or chicken broth
  • 1/4 cup Arborio rice (improves texture after blending)
  • 16 cups of leafy greens, herbs, broccoli, and zucchini (whatever is green and in season), coarsely chopped
  • 4 cups water, vegetable broth, or chicken broth
  • a pinch of cayenne
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • any other seasonings desired
  • olive oil to garnish

Steps:

  1. Set Instant Pot to saute and add fat, onions, salt, and pepper.
  2. Stir occasionally while cooking for 5 minutes, lid off.
  3. Stir, put the lid on, seal, and pressure cook for 20 minutes. Release pressure and remove lid. Onions should have a nice caramel color.
  4. Stir in 3 cups water or broth and 1/4 cup Arborio rice. Put the lid on, seal, and pressure cook for 1 minute. Release pressure manually and remove lid.
  5. Stir in the green veggies and add 4 more cups water or broth to Instant Pot. Pressure cook for 4 minutes. Release pressure and remove lid.
  6. Use an immersion blender in the pot, blending until contents are liquified.
  7. Add cayenne and lemon juice to taste. Adjust seasonings as desired. Garnish with olive oil.

Making and using umami powder

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The Splendid Table podcast had a guest caller who shared her recipe for umami powder, in October 2017. She’d grown up in Japan, and after returning to the U.S. as an adult, experimented and came up with this flavor-enhancing powder that you can add to American favorites as well as East Asian ones.

Here’s the episode (the umami power segment starts at 41:30 and ends at 46:30), and here’s the recipe. I thought I’d share my experience making it, as well as ways to use it.

Ingredients:

  • 1-oz. package of bonito flakes (makes 6 tablespoons)
  • 1 oz. bulk dried shiitake mushrooms (or if not available in bulk, a small package — use the rest in soups)
  • small package of kombu (with what you don’t use for umami powder, add half a sheet when cooking dried legumes — it takes the gas out, and you can fish it out before serving )

Tools:

  • coffee/spice grinder
  • medium-size bowl
  • kitchen scale
  • scissors
  • small whisk

Instructions:

  1. Fill the coffee/spice grinder with bonito flakes and pulverize into a fine powder. Empty the grinder into the bowl. Repeat until all the bonito flakes are ground up.
  2. Do the same with the shiitakes. You may need to manually break large ones up to fit into the grinder. Repeat as needed. Add the shiitake powder to the bonito flake powder.
  3. Place sheets of kombu on the scale and add/subtract to get one ounce. Use scissors to cut 1/4″ strips of kombu lengthwise, and then cut across the strips to make 1/4″ squares. 
  4. Put these into the grinder and grind to a fine powder. Add to the bonito and shiitake powder.
  5. Whisk the three powders gently to mix well. 
  6. Makes 1 cup of light, fluffy powder. I stored it in a jar, and you could also put some in a spice container for sprinkling on food.

The originator of this recipe, Erica from Seattle, recommends adding the powder to burgers, meatloaf, and “a savory oatmeal that was phenomenal”.

She also mentions adding it to seafood soups to make them taste like they’ve simmered for hours.

Other ideas:

  • Sprinkle it on food as a seasoning.
  • Use it to add flavor to sauces and broths.
  • Add it to savory porridges like congee.
  • Sprinkle it on a piece of fish before cooking. 
  • Sprinkle on chicken before baking.
  • Add to ricotta with herbs to make spread for toast or crackers.

Have you made umami powder? How have you used it?

Asparagus soup with lemon and Parmesan

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You know when you buy bunches of asparagus to steam or roast, and you snap off the woody ends of the stems because they are so fibrous and chewy?

In the past, I have thrown them away or saved them for stock. But no more!

Today I used them to make a delicious asparagus soup! I added the lemon butter left over from the roasted asparagus I made last night, so as not to waste that wonderful flavor. So this soup is twice frugal.

Wow, it is tasty! Here’s how:

Lemon butter:

1 stick grass-fed butter
juice of a medium-size lemon Continue reading →