Posts tagged filling soups
LOSING THE LOCKDOWN WEIGHT GAIN...

Everybody is talking about the effect the C-19 virus and the restrictions have been having with regard to our mental health - depression, anxiety, huge concerns about our loved ones and how to keep them safe, the continuing fear when the situation appears to be never-ending.

In addition to all of the above, many of us are more than a little concerned/depressed/anxious that we have really ‘packed on the pounds’ and it can be mighty hard to commit to some dietary changes. Needless to say, the internet is heaving with diet after diet but I am not convinced that ‘a diet’ is what we need right now.

As many of my readers and followers are aware, I include soups in all my weight loss/weight maintenance plans but I think, whilst many of us are ‘home-based’ more than we normally are and are spending more time in the kitchen than we normally do, I believe that we should continue to make soups BUT not any old soup!

Low calorie, possibly weight loss-inducing light soups are all very well but ‘filling soups’ should become the order of the day currently. A couple of bowls can seriously ‘fill you up’ and hopefully banish the need to snack on bics, crisps, sarnies, pastries, cakes and the rest.

What we need to ‘fill us up’ is a deal of protein, a deal of good fats plus antioxidant-rich vegetables and some carbohydrates… so which of my many soup recipes ticks all (or many) of the boxes? Here is a selection… click on the images to access the recipes.

If you don’t eat meat, leave it out and experiment with the protein-rich plant-based products that you generally use: tofu, tempeh, quinoa, lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, nutritional yeast, amaranth or some of the ‘meat-replacement’ products that you can find in supermarkets and/or healthfood shops but try not to fall into the trap of adding more blood sugar-disrupting, carbohydrate-heavy foods.

MORE PESTO PLEASE!
MINESTRONE SOUP

MINESTRONE SOUP

A really good spoonful added to Minestrone, fantastic on sour dough toast with ripe tomatoes, alongside steamed vegetables or perhaps sneaked into a baked potatoes, stirred through pasta at the very last minute or maybe just spooned straight from the jar - it’s has got to be said - pesto is kind of addictive!

But have you made pesto with oil that is rich in essential fatty acids? An oil that enriches our food while delivering the superb qualities of the much-needed EFA’s for our health and wellbeing and has had no damaging heat treatment at all?

I like Udo’s Oil, 3*6*9 Blend but there are others on the shelves - try avoid the ones in plastic bottles (they tend to be cheaper but they are not so pure).

I am struggling to remember where this pesto recipe came from but I think it had something to do with Udo Erasmus (what a great name!) whilst I was studying nutrition and his ground-breaking research into Omega 3’s BUT I do know it is really good, particularly when it is straight out the blender and slung in a devil-may-care fashion on top of my minestrone soup!