Here’s some inspiration for some cold winter evenings to make dinner fun, simple & delicious.
Yes, SOUP CAN BE A MEAL and not just an entrée! It is a quick and easy meal for families of all ages & stages.
I embrace the AND philosophy. What’s that you might wonder?
Well I believe our food can be healthy AND taste good AND look visually appealing too. AND healthy food does not need to be expensive either!!! Just go with what’s in season locally is best & healthier too for reasons I won’t go into just now.
The visual appearance and “colour on the plate” are key features in any meal for me.
There are a multitude of reasons why there should be colour on the plate for everyone and not just the vegetarians (like me) of this world. I’ll save that for another blog another day….
Food is to be enjoyed and to have a bit of fun with. I’m not talking food fights here!
For a while now I’ve been playing around with the idea of smoothie bowls – a thick smoothie in a bowl rather than a glass and putting additional yummy ingredients on top to make it look AND feel more special. So I thought, why not play around with that concept for soups.
In Winter, I love my hot soups and have been playing around with the concept of titivating them and making them into a fully balanced nutritional meal and there’s been a bit of interest following my pic I posted on social media so I thought I’d share my latest little experiment.
This year I decided to do a “Johnstone’s Soup Kitchen” on Sunday nights and invite friends to come and join us for a couple of different soup recipes. We’d done a Mexican Monday theme for a while so why not add a new tradition.
My tool of trade is my Thermomix which enables me to do this relatively effortlessly, but you can obviously make soups the traditional way too.
I use my “Thermoserver” (shown here) which is a double coated steel container to keep the first soup option warm while I make the other one. I love the fact that I don’t need to stress about having to cook strategically so everything is ready hot at the same time! Whew – big relief. If you’re interested to get one – just message me or give me a call.
As you can see in this photo I added a mix of fresh veges (celery/cucumber/tomato/red capsicum) chopped up on top as an over-sized garnish, if you like, plus some edamame beans which I steamed while I was cooking the soup.
Edamame beans are a wonderful source of vegetable protein with the added advantage that they have fibre (see note below) and all sorts of vitamins and minerals in them as well.
Often I will steam the podded version of Edamame Beans as they take the same amount of time as
making the soup and are a fun & visual component. A healthy seeded loaf of bread is also an option.
TIPS
Fibre
Most people only get a fraction of the fibre their body needs from what they eat each day. You don’t get fibre from traditional carbs like white rice or pasta. You mainly get it from your vegetables, salad and fruit. The average person only gets approx. 25g of fibre/day and we should be aiming for 35g plus. Our grandparents were probably getting double that!
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