Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Soups’ Category

May 14

Think Thin Tuesday: Sweet and Sour Patch Soup

Oh the Fad diet.  Most people have tried at least one.  Fasting, juicing, celery sticks, eating only foods of a certain color or only having sugar on days that end in Y…most Americans have been there.  They almost never ever work and when they do, you end up gaining back all the weight you lost and then some.  That’s because most of the time what you lose is primarily water and muscle.  Yet we continuously cycle back to them as a culture because we want to get skinny and we want it NOW –just like everything else.

One fad diet I distinctly remember from being a kid growing up in the 80s was the cabbage soup diet.  You know, 7 days of a stinky, flatulence inducing bland soup promising to help you drop 10 pounds!  Miracle of miracles.  Except it didn’t work because people go bored, people got gassy and people were basically just filling up on nutritionally empty soups loaded with fiber.  I don’t remember if my mom ever tried this diet because we ate cabbage soup as a Ukrainian/Russian Jewish thing and our cabbage soups were far from boring and bland.

Cabbage itself is actually really quite good for you when eaten raw or steamed.  It has amazing cancer fighting properties—specifically colon, bladder and prostate cancer.  It contains the chemical sinigrin—present in pretty much all the incredibly bitter and offputting vegetables we love to hate as kids.  Brussel sprouts, broccoli and horseradish are all high in the stuff but Savoy Cabbage especially is loaded with it.  Makes you wonder if Russians and Germans have a lower incidence of these really nasty cancers—all that sauerkraut does a colon good?  Red cabbage is also a particularly potent anti-inflammatory agent.

As such you really are better off eating cabbage for health either raw or steamed…but sometimes we just want a really tasty, low calorie, warm and filling recipe for those freak cold nights before summer.  At least I know I do.  The cabbage soup recipe that comes from centuries of Jewish cooking also manages to round out some of the lacking nutrition through the addition of tons of vegetables and tomatoes.  Thus it’s got a nice dosing of vitamin C so I don’t feel like I’m just filling up on fiber and water.   Plus we spice it up with some caraway seeds—which are also great chemical powerhouses of cancer fighting agents.  So even though this recipe is more diet fadly than diet friendly…it’s something that you can eat once a week to reduce your over-all caloric load and still feel like you’re doing the body some good.

Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup

Just like Nana used to make…with a few Olivia Modifications Read more

Apr 24

3 Comments

Vegan Stocks – A farmer’s market

Bad Olivia.  Bad.  I totally missed my post yesterday and I had a great recipe to share but alas my job has been ramping up and sore throats have been passing around…so I’ll keep the subject of yesterday’s post in my pocket for another time.  Today I really wanted to get into a cornerstone recipe that really anyone should have, but that will be especially useful in building vegan recipes: a beefy vegetable stock.  This is a great recipe to have because it’s full of flavor without any meat products and even the most carnivorous fiend could find uses for this.  I fully attribute the beef-like flavor to my trick, and not so secret, ingredient which I’ll reveal below. But before the recipe a little detour and there might even be a trivia question along the way.

What is this secret beefy flavoring?

I was researching the idea of being a social vegan and discovered a new breed of eater: the flexivore.  It turns out that there are other omnivores like myself who have looked around and decided to continue to eat meat, but make a conscious effort to reduce their consumption overall out of objection to how the meat industry is currently run.  I suspect this aligns a great deal with the publishing of Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” which managed to really open my eyes to a variety of issues in the world of food—both exposing new problems and flushing out ones I was already familiar with.  I’ve read a lot on the topic of food (shocker!) but this is still one of my favorite books to hand off to friends because I think it manages to be both entertaining and compelling while being highly informative.  Plus it profiles my favorite farmer in the whole wide world.  No not McDonald – a libertarian hippie out of Virginia by the name of Joel Salatin.  (l)ibertarian hippies are the best and I’m probably just saying that because I am one *wink* Therefore I openly admit a little bit of a political bias to my love of this book.

But even with that in mind you can’t fight the facts.  My number one reason for eating vegan when I eat out is summed up in one, surprising word: Corn.  As it turns out that one word—corn—is synonymous with another word in our diets—Oil.  No not the kind you cook with.  The kind we drive and have land wars over.  Let me explain.  No there is too much.  Let me sum up.  **Name that movie for a prize!!** I know my readers have short attention spans so I’m not going to give you a detailed book report because really it would take pages so let me just explain my issue with meat and how it relates to corn and oil.

Why the scientist, nutritionist and health conscious me objects to the modern meat industry:

  • Stock base

    Agribusiness raises our meat on a diet of corn because corn is cheap and cows get nice and fat off it.  Fat means lots of saturated fats which taste good to the consumer and cheap corn feed for the cows means high profits.
  • Cows can’t digest corn properly.  It makes them sick.  So sick that we pump them full of antibiotics—not to cure the disease mind you because it’s not bacterial.  No we use the antibiotics to cure the symptoms of their gastrointestinal distress.  The antibiotics also make the cows bigger and fatter.  Win for agribusiness! 
  • But wait…doesn’t misuse of antibiotics mean resistant bugs?  You are a winner.  Yes it does.  And there’s more…see the antibiotics actually change the chemistry of a cow’s stomach.  A cow’s stomach is distinct from a human’s and should not normally incubate bacteria that can make us sick.  The antibiotics change that.  Now the cows harbor germs that can make us ill, and are breeding resistant version of them.  All this while they are kept in highly unsanitary conditions…like standing in 6 inches of cow poop all day instead of grazing.
  • Agriculture accounts for 60-70% of our antibiotics in this country and largely for these unwarranted applications.

But wait there’s more….why the economist, libertarian and peace loving hippie me object:

  • Corn is cheap to produce, the bulk of what we grow is inedible to humans as well as cows and gets sold at a loss to these big farms yet we grow more each year.  Why?
  • It all started with a post-world war 2 surplus of U.S. government owned ammonium nitrate for making bombs.  Ammonium also makes good fertilizer.  Since the government was out of the war business it went into the fertilizer making business instead.
  • Corn became King, or as Pollan puts it Queen (as in the Welfare Queen) since it was cheap to grow and could be converted to a number of things like high fructose corn sugar, ethanol and utilized as food for chickens and pigs who can digest it.  Excess fertilizer on the market meant cheap fertilizer and the advent of monoculture.  (Simplified definition: Monoculture refers to the practice of farming where fertilizer is used to replenish soil deprived of nutrients from over farming of a single crop)
  • Corn flooded the market because it was such a good seller…at first.  Then we had too much and prices went down.  Farmers started growing more to try to sell more to make up for previous year losses. 

  • Today the cost of producing corn is subsidized by 50%–that’s taxpayer money and translates to 6 billion a year.  And the cost keeps going down.  We’re investing in a loss year after year.  Why?  Because big agribusiness and Uncle Ronald McDonald depends on the stuff. 
  • ¼ of the goods you buy in a supermarket contain corn products.  A chicken nugget which is comprised of 38 ingredients is almost a third corn and no that doesn’t mean it’s good for you.  Sorry Dad.
  • Oh and by the way, the fertilizer to make that corn each year?  It requires oil.  That stuff we get from the middle east.  Conservative estimates show that 1 bushel of corn = ¼ gallon of oil.  How much corn do we produce in a year?  Well in 2007 we grew over 13 billion bushels.  The number has come down to closer to 12.5 in recent trends.  That’s still well over 3 billion gallons of oil in a year…to grow a crop we have too much of and lose money on.  And that doesn’t even account for the other hidden oil costs—like how much we need to run the plants that process that corn into things like corn syrup; the cost of the machines to farm it; the cost of healthcare as consumers eat excessive amounts of cheap sugars and get fat and sickly.
  • Don’t get me started on how this impacts our healthcare system.  I’m already at two pages.  But while the corn investment cost might not be much (6 billion is nothing compared to our military budget) if you consider the impact of cheap sugar/fat foods on health and our health care costs this becomes all the more shocking. 

And I’m still not getting into it all.  Now admittedly going vegan doesn’t really mean you stop supporting this overuse of oil for fertilizer since the other two gas guzzling crops are wheat and soy—a staple in most vegan diets.  It is however a start.  I also avoid soy as much as possible for other reasons I’ll explore on another day.  Tomorrow I’ll hopefully get into a little bit more of the environmental impact of factory farming, the meat industry and the corn connection but for now I’ll move onto this soup stock—something which is definitely worth investing a little thyme into.  Soup stock is essential not just for soups but as a way of adding a boost of flavor to an assortment of dishes.  It provides the backbone for a number of sauces and gravies.  A good stock is central to any kitchen pantry…or in my case a freezer.  You can make a huge batch of this stuff and then freeze it in various quantities. 

My favorite trick?  Ice cubes.  Pour this into an ice cube tray and then store into baggies once frozen.  This creates perfect 1-2 tbsp allotments that you can use in a pinch without having to thaw a huge batch or keep fresh stuff on hand all the time.  This is the only stock tip I’ve ever taken from Martha Stewart.  My ultimate vegan vegetable stock uses dried mushrooms–and don’t skimp on the porcini! No it doesn’t taste like mushroom soup thanks to the plethora of other vegetables but what the mushrooms do is impart an undeniable beef-y flavor quality which will leave your guests asking many questions.  Questions like “Who made this amazing soup/gravy?” and “You mean this is VEGAN?!” but never will you hear “where’s the beef?!”  Do not fear the fungi.  It’s your best friend in this recipe so even if you don’t normally like to eat mushrooms, try this out.  It might start to turn you….

Olivia’s Beefed up Vegan Broth

An Olivia Original – Makes about 8 to 10 cups Read more

Apr 9

Think Thin Tuesday: Avoiding Vegetative S(t)ouper

My number one piece of advice to someone looking to force themselves to get more active, and also save a little money, is this: cut the cable.  Do it. It’s scary I know and if you are a sports fan…well I can’t help you there as much but if you aren’t addicted to ESPN cut the damn cord.  Cable is expensive and with the myriad of online subscription options expanding every day you don’t need it.  Add them up and they are still cheaper than your hundred dollar plus Comcast bill.  Do you own a tablet of some sort that streams video?  Even more reason to get unhooked to the actual idiot box.  Not being stuck in front of the tv all night after work will get you moving and doing other things.  The advantage to streaming is that you can watch when you want—catch up on a day when you are genuinely immobile or commuting on the metro.  Take it with you on the plane.  When you don’t have a choice about being immobile, that’s a good time to watch.

But Olivia I don’t want to fall behind on my shows. In fact I like watching them LIVE when I can.  Fine you whiner I already thought of the solution to that AND it gets you moving.  Ready? Now here’s what you do with that money you saved: buy a gym membership.  There are a lot of cheap deals out there for 30-40 bucks a month.  Spend the money on online subscriptions and gym membership.  How does a gym membership help? Well with the exception of certain premium stations like HBO, big gyms with cheap fees like 24 hour fitness have cable subscriptions.  If you want to watch oh say, Glee on Thursday night at is actual broadcast time—go to the gym and use their television.  Hop on a treadmill and walk a light pace; you don’t have to break a sweat if you don’t want to.  3 miles an hour is fine—hell 2 if you’re really lazy and an annoying as fuck slow walker….  The point is you save money and instead of sitting on the couch eating, i.e. gaining weight while actively doing nothing; you can get a little bit of electrical activity in your legs and watch the show.  This way you aren’t munching away an entire bag of potato chips.  I mean we’ve all done it.  Instead you burn maybe 100 calories that hour, keep your metabolism awake and get to watch your favorite tv show for half the cost.

Genius no?

I think it is so shut up.  This plan works really well for people who just abhor cardio with a passion.  If you just can’t find the enjoyment in going for a run, cycling classes, aerobics or swimming and you need to distract your mind to get your body moving this is the perfect fix.  It’s not going to get you Spartan abs ala 300 and it won’t result in significant weight loss in the long run, but it will help you lose a few pounds or just avoid the late night vegetative stupor that comes with primetime tv.  If you hate gyms and can afford it then just buy a damn treadmill/bike/stair climber…whatever you prefer and put it in front of the tv but you better use it. Typically I see people buy equipment with this intent and get lured in by the seductive nature of their couches.  Just can’t resist those alluring fibers and springs….  I like the gym membership because it really forces you to go get moving.  You can’t sit on a couch and use the gym tv.  And for those channels that air our favorite shows but aren’t carried by the gym’s cable?  Well that’s where your PC tablet comes in handy.  I’m not going to tell you how to get ahold of Game of Thrones without a cable subscription but I know some of you have it so…get walking.

And for those nights when it’s cold, windy, and rainy and you just feel crummy and need to curl up on the couch…well how about a nice vegetable skinny soup?  It’ll fill your tummy without all the excess sodium and empty calories the bag of lays has AND it might be one of the few things that help you to avoid becoming what you eat.  Indulge in a sourdough roll with it since the soup is so light on calories and fat OR you can bulk it up a little more with rice or whole wheat pasta.  The choices are endless.

Italian Vegetable Soup

An Olivia Original Read more

Feb 28

Squash you with a smart ass re-Tortilla Soup

squashtortillasoup (14)Looks like my hubris finally caught up to me and I am sick as a damn dog.  It was only a matter of time really.  I have been literally attacked by bugs on every front.  My roommate was sick, my coworkers were sick, friends or friends of friends were sick….  You get the picture.  Plus I’m still not convinced it wasn’t the little kid who sneezed on me at the grocery store.  Her mother didn’t say a damn thing about covering your mouth when you do that and I was not amused.  I politely told the little girl, and I’m good with kids so it was not in a critical tone I swear—I’m freaking Mary Poppins okay, and not in her terrifying mode—but the mother shot me a nasty look for it.  Ugh.  Parents learn to parent please.  Oh and I take public transit which is germ-a-palooza even when it isn’t flu season.  Basically riding BART is like plunging yourself into an overrun petri dish of disease but I love how useful it is for getting to work.

squashtortillasoup (15)Stop me if I get to ranty but there is one very big downside I have found to using BART aside from the fact that it’s a fertile breeding ground for a zombie outbreak.  I love it because I get to read rather than fight traffic and thus keep my blood pressure low.  I hate it because instead of horns and harried drivers bothering me, instead I am subjected to an even worse crime of transit.  A question: a simple, and probably to some people, unassuming question.

“What are you reading?”

ARGH.

I hate that question.  I hate it with a passion.  You know why?  Anyone who genuinely loves books is not going to ask a stranger who is in the middle of reading, what they are reading.  Why?  Well two reasons: 1) this insolent intruder, were he a true bibliophile, would know how disruptive it is to be interrupted and removed from the world you are currently immersed in and 2) this interrupting interloper would simply READ the title of the book you are holding.   Aha!  But what if you are using an e-reader?  Then rule number 2 doesn’t apply.  Okay smart ass, you’re right it doesn’t, but you know what I’ve noticed?  No one asks me what I’m reading when I have an e-reader open.  It’s almost like if I’m using a Kindle then clearly it’s serious business but if I go low-tech, really I’m just hoping that this bundle of carbon printed words will serve as a prop for some super suave man to pick me up with his oh too original line: so what are you reading?squashtortillasoup (16)

Listen bub, my book is not a prop.  I’m actually reading it.  See before Kindle came out we had to buy the actual physical books.  I happen to own a lot of them, many still unread because I am constantly outpacing myself with what I can read versus what I discover I want to read.  I’m not about to suddenly re-buy all of them just so I can use an e-reader for everything.  In fact several books are still much cheaper to buy in their physical form rather than electronic and I am ultimately ruled by money when it comes to my consumerist tendencies.

squashtortillasoup (3)Anyway it’s always men who interrupt me and it’s always with the intent on their part to start a discussion with me.  Usually I respond with a smart ass quip that makes them stop but occasionally that gets taken as an invitation to continue to harass me.  Why?  Why?  I know I’m not the only woman to get this either—and men who read you’ve probably been interrupted too at some point.  How do you deal with it?  What do you say?  I actually think it could be fun to keep a list of responses to this question that plagues bookworms across the globe so leave any you have in the comments.  The one I most remember enjoying in my sadist way was when an older man on the train had been attempting to talk to a number of ladies around me.  When his attentions turned to me and I heard the inevitable question “So whatcha reading” I lowered my book, which was blatantly displayed in such a way that you couldn’t possibly miss the title, and I put on feigned shock.  “Oh my god, I’m reading?  How did that happen?”  Then I closed it got up and walked to the back of the train.  I know I shouldn’t be bitchy to a stranger but I just wanted to get away so I did my best to squash his attention with a smart ass retort.

And now back to bed.  I’m probably going to miss work tomorrow because this sinus infection is not looking promising.  I’ll be brewing up some Jewish Penicillin to get myself healthy but I’ve had this soup on hand in the past as well and it’s pretty delicious with some heat to clear those nasal passages.  Ideally you shouldn’t eat dairy either when you’re sick but sometimes you need something a little comforting and all things considered, this soup isn’t excessively cheesy.  It does satisfy that desire for comfort though because it tastes like a big bowl of nachos.  A warm, soothing bowl of nachos.  Mmmmm.

Butternut Squash Tortilla Soup

Adapted from The New England Soup Factory Cookbook Read more

Feb 22

Fantasy Friday: A bowl of eastern medicine

“Don’t be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then in order to maintain our sanity.”

With that line I officially decided that I liked this month’s Sword and Laser bookclub pick—the 1984 fantasy novel “A Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was” by Barry Hughart.  I like it a lot.

“Bridge of Birds” is a fantasy novel set in a grand and fantastical ancient imperial China.  The book follows the troubles of a small village where all children between the ages of 8 and 10 are struck down by a mysterious illness following the silk worm festival.  The lead character, Lu-Yu known as Number 10 Ox, is a young man who is exceptionally strong though not exceptionally bright.  He is sent off to find a wise man to bring back to the village to determine how this plague, which has sent all the children into a comatose state, can learn to count—because it is only a specific age group struck—and to find a cure.  Wise men do not come cheap and the best Ox can afford is an old drunk who actually turns out to be one of the wisest men in all of China—Master Li whose wisdom could not save him from a falling of grace due to a “slight flaw of character.”  Li quickly unearths what has befallen the children and discovers that the only cure is a rare ginseng plant known as the Great Root of Power.  Together Master Li and Ox travel through China, and Chinese folklore, to find this healing root in time to save the village children.

“Take a large bowl.  Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy.  Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization….and drink… ‘And I will be wise?’ he asked. ‘Better’ I said ‘You will be Chinese’.”

What I really enjoyed about this book was the interspersing on the main plot with many other stories and samples of ancient China.  I’m a self-proclaimed scholar of fairy tales (I took those classes in college that make me an expert after all :P ) but I must admit that my rather expansive expertise largely only covers Western culture.  I have some familiarity with Arabian/Middle Eastern tales as well but my knowledge of East Asian culture is embarrassingly lacking.  I enjoyed how unfamiliar I was with these stories.  So often I get caught up in tellings, re-tellings, re-imaginings of the more traditional European folklore.  There’s nothing wrong with knowing what I enjoy but I’m not really expanding or learning anything new when I see Cinderella retold for the umpteenth time.  If you have a vested interested in fairytales/folklore/mythology you will enjoy this book.  The tales aren’t traditional Chinese folklore but retellings or inspired by more traditional tales.  Very clever Hughart, now I have to go out and read MORE so I can compare and fill in my knowledge gaps.  Getting me to read, damn you!

The stories follow the Grimm tradition of being almost shockingly violent and bloody at times.  The opening of the book focuses so much on children’s rhymes and humor that when the first really violent scene unfolded it caught me off guard.   If descriptions of torture and blood are difficult for you there will be sections of this novel that make you queasy.  There were moments where I actually had a hard time reading depictions of some ancient Chinese torture techniques—and I can stomach a lot.  Two characters in particular, the Duke and the Ancestress, are villains that especially revel in the blood lust.  The Ancestress is a bit more comical and I imagined her as a Chinese version at times of the Queen of Hearts from Wonderland; she’s rather fond of decapitation.  The violence gets a treatment with some levity at times—one of the good guys runs around with his axe happily shouting “Chop Chop Chop!” with comical emphasis as he hacks and saws apart his enemies.  I think the humor actually makes the violence seem more shocking but that could just be me.

My biggest complaint about the book, which has been echoed on boards, is that it starts off pretty slow and has some moments where it meanders.  I’ve noticed that is a common problem in quest based stories.  It seems like there’s always a point where information gets told rather than shown—and in those moments where the author gets stuck the characters are usually stuck meandering around in the woods somewhere as well.  Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings….  It happens.

Of course like any good folk tale at the root “The Bridge of Birds” is a love story but you won’t realize that’s what you’re reading until a good third of the way in.  I liked that.  It was pleasant to go on this journey with the two lead characters and get some genuine surprises along the way.  So often I find writing, especially television writing, to be extremely predictable.  I’d predicted the outcome of the book before the end but there were still a number of surprises for me and I absolutely LOVED that.

“Ginseng hunters refer to the plan as chang-diang shen, “the root of lightning,” because it is believed that it appears only on the spot where a small mountain spring has been dried up by a lightning bolt.  After a life of three hundred years the green juice turns white and the plant acquires a soul.  It is then able to take on human form, but it never becomes truly human because ginseng does not know the meaning of selfishness.”

When I wasn’t being grossed out by depictions of body parts oozing and being removed, I was learning a great deal about the medicinal mysticism surrounding ginseng.  Most Americans are only exposed to this root as an ingredient in herbal teas.  It’s a highly sought after additive and as I discovered at my local Korean market, very expensive when purchased fresh.  The list of supposed health benefits is long and largely unverified but there is sufficient correlative data in the medical community for a select few.  Ginseng has shown to be a good supplement for your immune system; it seems to boost white blood cell count and immune response—especially in conjunction with vaccinations.  It also promotes insulin uptake and therefore makes it a great supplement for those suffering from diabetes.  Some more popular, though less supported claims, are that it promotes mental acuity/alertness and is a popular supplement for a certain male specific…dysfunction.  It’s no wonder then that this plant has such a huge place in East Asian culture and tradition.  It is also similar to mandrake roots in that it is often described as looking human-ish thus inspiring a sort of religious reverence to the plant.

My question in reading was: does ginseng ever get used in food dishes?  I am familiar with a South Korean soup called “Samgyetang” which features a chicken stuffed with rice, a bunch of things I was unfamiliar with and ginseng.  As it turns out this is a popular soup in Chinese cuisine as well—the Cantonese refer to it as Yun Sum Gai Tong—but since 99.999999% of all Chinese restaurants are American Chinese, you aren’t likely to find it on the menu.  Some more authentic Korean spots will have it though but be warned that Ginseng is rather bitter.  I tried my hand at making this soup at home inspired by the book and despite my best efforts you just can’t take away that slight bitter bite in the root.  On the other hand that’s what means it’s good for you!   The soup is supplemented with Jujubes, a sweet red date, ginger, garlic, rice and water chestnuts.  I’m so glad I made it too.  The weather has been unseasonably warm and over the weekend a cold snap came in to remind everyone that it’s still February and not to get so cavalier about winter ending.  The day the cold hit I ran to my kitchen to get to soup making.  My poor roommate came down with a fever literally the day after I brewed a batch of this stuff so I’ve been shoving it at him every time he emerges from his bedroom.  It’s entirely selfishly motivated—I don’t want to get sick!

Yun Sum Gai Tong

An Olivia Original inspired by “The Bridge of Birds” Read more

Jan 29

Twofer Tuesday: Duck, Duck…Soup

Introducing Twofer Tuesdays – Two recipes for the price of one!  This week is also a Think Thin post but I’m retiring that title for more general use so you might get think thin thursdays or random healthy recipes as I kickstart back up my own diet.

Something my friends have learned from my instagram and photo streams:  I share photos that will either whet your appetite or turn your stomach.  Case in point—I’ll switch between taking snapshots of doughnuts and cookies to images of post-surgery body parts oozing and gushing.  Yum yum!  I recently had to have another ingrown toenail removed (why am I posting about this on my food blog?) and put up a picture that got an array of disgusted responses.  Don’t worry I won’t be sharing that here now.  Suffice to say it hurt, it still hurts and is in fact in such a bad way that I’m on antibiotics – read between the lines ewwww she’s infected.  Who said pretty girls can’t be gross?  We fart and burp too.  Yup yup yup!  Some hot girls even do it on microphones—I’m looking at you Adrienne Curry.  That woman is insanely hot, insanely geeky and insanely disgusting and I love her for all three.

But on the topic of grossness, I feel awful.  Not sure if it’s because I was in so much pain from my wee toe that I could sleep last night or these antibiotics I’m on—4 times a day!  What?!  I’ve never had antibiotics I had to remember to take so often and I was even on Bactrim years ago which is a huge honkin’ horse pill of a triple-acting antibiotic regimen.  Yuck.  I’m not usually sensitive to medications though I can’t stomach Tamiflu.  Literally can’t stomach it which kind of sucks since it’s the only real anti-viral that exists on the market.  Thankfully I seem to avoid getting the flu year after year in favor of my standing appointment with bronchial infections that have plagued me since childhood.  Or at least I used to.  January has almost come to a close and I have officially made it over a year—a year—without a sinus infection.  Is it a bird, a plane, a miracle?  Nope.  It’s Bikram yoga but I’ll wax and wane poetical about that another day because while I’m grateful to be healthy in a way I’ve never before experienced, I’m in a piss poor mood right now about this stupid toe thing.

I think I’ve been indulging too much as well.  I feel bloated and disgusting and know I’ve gained back a pound or two in the last few weeks.  It’s hard to balance the desire to hunker down in the winter with warm fatty comfort food and efforts to lose or maintain weight loss plans, isn’t it?  We instinctively want to eat more in order to put on that heat insulating blubber that our bodies needed before the modern first world marvel that is the indoor heater.  Part of the problem is that I’ve been on a mad woman quest to develop the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie and as such I have made and eaten way too much cookie dough and finished products.  I’m giving em away as much as I can but really how is a girl to resist warm, gooey cookies fresh from the oven?  I’m happy to say that I’ve finally gotten the recipe tweaked to my liking, as my hips clearly show, and as of today I am officially back on a rigid diet until my weight is back to where I want to maintain it.  But how do you balance that still with cold, overcast weather?

Soup.

Soup is a great meal for dieting in the winter so long as you are making the right choices i.e. avoiding those bacon, cheese, cream and potato laden bowls of deliciousness.  I know baked potato soup is amazing but it’s also NOT a diet friendly option.  Good news though: you don’t have to sacrifice rich, decadent flavorful soups for skinny jeans.  I’ve got a recipe for a Duck broth vegetable soup that will warm you up from the inside out.  The flavors always summon up for me the feeling that I’m in a French countryside cottage with a fire roaring, keeping my toes toasty despite snow on the ground outside.  It’s got all the indulgence of French cuisine without the guilt.  I’ve paired it with a great recipe for some sweet potato biscuits and while the carb load isn’t exactly on diet, if you can constrain yourself to JUST ONE, then you can still have a delicious rustic dinner for under 500 calories—and you never knew that a bit of soup and crust of bread could taste so good.

 Duck Duck Soup

an Olivia Original Read more

Nov 20

1 Comment

Think Thin Tuesday: A split-speady holiday soup

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat…but first we’ve got TURKEY DAY to contend with.  I’m both eagerly anticipating and dreading the gorgefest that is this Thursday.  I mean I love the holiday because it’s an excuse for me to think, talk, breathe, sleep, swim, bathe, timewarp and gangnam dance all about food!  Still the thought of how much I’m going to eat, and oh I will be eating, makes my little bitty tummy cry out in horror and my tastebuds just laugh maniacally.   I love the food but oh I dread the scale and the rock feeling that comes after.  This year our menu will be slightly modified to feature a healthier assortment of fair since my Mom has been working to lose weight (and you know I have been) and my Step-Dad **should** be eating healthier though if you’ll remember at times I feel like that’s a losing battle.  This means mashed cauliflower at our table instead of mashed potatoes, though there will be molasses scalloped yams, and a heart healthy salad of kale and brussel sprouts but oh I am getting ahead of myself.  Thanksgiving isn’t here yet and none of these things have been made. 

As I’m trying to get all these things done my posts will be a bit lighter this week.  I’m taking the day before off work so I can focus entirely on yoga and meal prep.  In the meantime I wanted to bring you a great recipe that is perfect for Thanksgiving and anytime in the fall, light on calories and what is this?  Vegan?!  Twice in a week…two days in a row?  No don’t worry I’m not cutting meat out of my diet.  This was an “accidentally vegan” recipe.  I probably just instinctively gravitated toward out of a subconscious desire to balance the insane quantities of turkey I’ll be consuming later on in the week and for days after.

Once Thanksgiving passes the pumpkin stock in the stores dies down considerably…and after January especially.  They are usually still in season though so if you don’t get a chance to make this now keep it in mind for some chilly January night.  Pumpkin yellow split pea soup just gives me another excuse to use my favorite fall ingredient.  I’ll have a less healthy pumpkin recipe for you tomorrow too…and no it won’t be a pie!  Pumpkin doesn’t come only in pie and lattes ya know.  It’s an extremely healthy recipe—the soup tastes sweet thanks to the pumpkin.  There’s almost no fat and you still get a good 7 grams of protein in a bowl. 

What I really love about this recipe is how very simple it is to make.  If you are attending a family gathering Thursday and want to bring something to contribute that isn’t a storebought pie, try this out instead.  Soup can be made a day or two ahead of time and if you just purchase pre-made broths and get already diced pumpkin you will have basically no fussy prep at all.  These serving sizes are approximate but a big batch of this stuff should make 15 – 1 ½ cup bowls.  That makes it great for a large family.  If you have a smaller family meal ahead of you, freeze single portions in freezer safe bowls.  It’ll keep really well all winter long in an airtight container.  I always have soups on hand in the freezer for cold, rainy days when I’m feeling under the weather.  Oh and for a little extra crunch add on a few roasted pumpkin seeds!  Nutritional value does not take this into account.

Pumpkin Yellow Split Pea Soup

Adapted from the New England Soup Factory Cookbook Read more

Sep 21

3 Comments

Fantasy Friday: Gamgee’s Potato Dumplin’s

It’s going to be a quiet blogging weekend for me as I descend upon southern california to celebrate the birthday of a dear friend of mine.  Kenny, also known as The Geeky Fanboy, will be hosting a party for a number of our guildie karass at his house.  We used to do these movie night get togethers very frequently but I’m afraid that hosting as many as 20 people in your home at a time takes its toll both emotionally (quite draining) and financially (as drunken people break your stairs, doors, tv stands….) and so we put these gatherings on hold for a little while.  I can hardly blame the poor guy and I don’t know that I’d have the ability to calmly have that many people roaming my house ever much less on a semi-regular basis. I’m glad that we’re doing another one though and entirely to celebrate the kind of “God-Father” Kenny is to our group.

I always imagine the gaggle of geeks that gather much like the dwarves who sing that poem from The Hobbit.   You know the one that goes:

Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
    Blunt the knives and bend the forks!
That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates-
  Smash the bottle and burn the corks!

Cut the cloth and tread on the fat!
  Pour the milk on the pantry floor!
Leave the bones on the bedroom mat!
  Splash the wine on every door!

Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl;
  pound them up with a thumping pole;
And when your finished, if any are whole
  Send them down the hall to roll!

That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates!
So, carefully! carefully with the plates!

We get rather boisterous while poor Kenny Baggins is constantly trying to maintain order, keep the kitchen clean and seems to be endlessly supplying us with food and drink.  Poor little hobbitses!  I try to do my part to help but I’ve found that he’s a great deal like me.  When I have company over for dinner and they offer to wash the dishes I always insist that they just leave the plates in the sink. For many this is a social game akin to when a girl reaches for the check but really with the understanding that next the boy will insist upon paying and she will relent.  The guest will try to wash the dishes but the host will insist it’s okay and so on and so forth.  Well with Kenny, and myself as I am much like him in this respect,we really don’t want you to wash our dishes.  Why?  I know how anal this sounds but 9 times out of 10 you’re going to do it wrong.  They won’t be quite right or they’ll get put away in the wrong spot…it inspires anxiety in me even thinking of it.  I often feel useless not helping Kenny clean up more during these events (I’ll do a little like throw away trash and wipe up spills) but I totally understand where he is coming from.

My analogy for our group dynamic is particularly apt because Kenny is a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings.  In fact he does a spectacular cosplay as Frodo, though because of the poem I always kind of think of him as Bilbo.  I’ll never forget the first time I read those books.  I was in fourth grade, so about 9 years old, and when I was doing my best to read the entire fantasy section of our school library.  For some reason the librarian decided to deny me when I first attempted to rent out “The Hobbit” because she thought it was going to be too advanced for me.  My mother set that woman straight in about two seconds–I’d been reading at what passes for an 11th grade level.  The librarian was skeptical but I devoured that book and came back for the rest in short time.  I recall the librarian quizzing me about the book and after I answered each question, delivering an intellectual bitch slap in the process, she never made another squawk about my book selections.

I’m sad I missed the LOTR movie marathon weekend that Kenny hosted over a year ago.  The films were exceptional and to celebrate the group made lembas bread.  I haven’t attempted to make my own lembas bread recipe though that is on my list for a total LOTR themed dinner party someday.  Maybe if I get a whole theme going for dinner I can convince Kenny to do a movie marathon redux for the films.  A recipe I do have in my arsenal I love because it is inspired both by a memorable line from Samwise Gamgee.  There’s that scene where Gollum is eating the raw fish and Sam is bemoaning the lack of potatoes:

What’s taters, precious?

Po-ta-toes? Po-ta-toes!

Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew!

I wondered what Sam might have in mind and realized potato dumplings fit the bill perfectly.  First you boil, then you mash them and then form balls which can be served up in a hearty stew.  Sam is a gardener so I realized his dumplings would also be particularly flavorful with some nice herbs and spices to round them out. Since Kenny Baggins usually cooks up biscuits and gravy for breakfast when I and all my dwarven brethren visit, I decided to slather these delicious hobbit treats in a sawmill gravy rather than a stew.  Exactly the sort of Prancing Pony tavern food a Hobbit would expect to have for elevenses and a fun melding of fantasy and friend inspired food.

Gamgee’s Potato Dumplin’s with Gravy
an Olivia Original inspired by LOTR – makes 20-24 dumplings Read more

Sep 14

1 Comment

SciFriday: Save the Soup-ers

As many of my readers will know I’m a big fan of the whole world of web-hosted media. I’ve been lucky enough to get to extra on not one, but two, seasons of that little webseries “The Guild.” A show that has lead the pack in a world where youtube makes it possible for anyone with an idea and a videocamera to bring a series to life…even if a studio exec isn’t interested. This results in a small set of some amazing, quality programming and a pretty large set of crappy, low budget bantha fodder.

In case you’ve missed it, another entry in the “amazing, quality” category is a series dreamed up by The Guild’s Sandeep Parikh: Save the Supers. It’s a comedy series shot in a style similar to “The Office” about a league of less-than-genius Super Heroes trying to save the world on a budget. It’s not exactly P.C. and the humor can be both puntastic and crude…so basically it’s amazing. The lineup includes squid inking Merman, diabolical Night Knight, egocentric World Man, petulant Elementra and naively sweet Fleet Foot. I find the camp, the humor, the spandexy goodness and that eternal struggle between good and evil all far more interesting than silicon butt implants you see on cable tv.

While it’s shot without a studio and on what probably amounts to the grocery budget of a college student, the show manages to look and feel like “real” tv. Plus it helps that Sandeep has a league of super-geek idols that guest star as villains over the course of the series lending some credence to it. Sad to report that Nathan Fillion and Bruce Campbell were not among them…yet. I can’t imagine two actors better suited to a geek out moment on this delightfully cornball series. Maybe next season guys? Keep in mind that I’m someone who owns all of “Jack of All Trades” on DVD. I really love this campy stuff.

While my two favorite punsters have not appeared on the show so far, you know who has? The Guild of Extras. Yup! My group of nerdlets and geeky gamers were lucky enough to be included in this first season of the show. Sadly the weekend of the big extra shoot was also the weekend that my good friend Chris was saying goodbye before deployment to Montana and so I skipped out on most of the filming. Even so I found time to make a tiny appearance in the fifth episode of the series as a caterer. See if you can spot me in Super Force vs. Online Dating – Episode V.

It makes me supremely happy to see this kind of programming succeeding and to know that in some small way I get to be a part of it. It’s pretty inspiring to know that people are taking their own dreams and finding ways of making them into realities. It’s not about who has the most money or the most connections anymore. It comes down to: do you have a quality idea? If you do, that will shine through and given some time, social networking (does it strike anyone else that this is the internet reboot of the oldschool concept of pounding the pavement) and yes still a little bit of luck, you can get the attention of people who want to back you, support you and make your show ten times better. That could mean money from Microsoft or a network of fans who will fly from across the country just to provide bodies on set and hands to paint. Almost makes me want to pick up a camera and start filming my kitchen antics…almost.

In honor of Merman’s quest for love this week’s recipe is one I’ve been absolutely dying to try out: Lusty Fish Stew. I realize that you wouldn’t normally acquaint lust with fish…or maybe you would. Gutterbrains. Regardless of whether you got where I was going with that, trust me you will be lusting after this soup when the smells start a-wafting from the stockpot. I’m always wary of fish soups. The odor of certain varieties can be unpleasant and in a hot summer, or the hot autumns I tend to get, those smells have a way of clinging to every surface of your apartment for days. This soup doesn’t do that. It’s got a delightful garlic, tomato and saffron spiced broth and those flavors balance out the fish really well. You also wind up throwing almost the entire ocean in the pot: salmon, scallops, mussels, clams, shrimp and halibut.

Though I guess cooking up all his friends isn’t really a nice homage to Merman. Might be more of a Worldman thing to do….

Lusty Fish Stew
modified from “The New England Factory Soup Book” Read more

Aug 14

2 Comments

Think Thin Tuesday: Stirring of an Early Girl

A fantastic meal substitute when you are trying to lose weight is soup.  A good bowl of soup with a side of some high fiber toast can be a great, light dinner though admittedly less desirable in the summer months.  Gazpacho can only be done so many ways after all….  The only thing that might sound more miserable to you my dear reader, than eating a hot soup, is making one in the summer.  I know I’m crazy for doing it but bear with me on this.  I like to wake up early, grab a batch of early girls (a tomato cultivar quite popular in California) and take advantage of the morning chill to enjoy the simple meditation of preparing a pot.  Since 15 whopping servings is usually more than I need, I’ll portion it out in mason jars as pints and then freeze them for a rainy, sickly day.  They also store great as lunches for a few weeks when airtight sealed.  I like to keep a jar at work for days when I want a skinny lunch or just something warm to slurp.  Just be sure if you freeze your mason jars that you use the kind approved for freezers and leave about an inch space at the top for liquids to expand.  I’ve yet to cause one to explode but an ex-boyfriend of mine did and it was NOT fun to clean up.

Summer time, especially the late, hot parts of summer is the best time to get my greedy hands on the bounty that is a ripe, tomato crop.  It works out nicely that I’m a natural early riser, that I find the mornings a fantastic time for reflection and that I find brewing up a bubbling soup to be the most meditative thing I can do in the kitchen.  Sure I love to bake but there is something about slow knife work for the mirepoix, the sounds of sizzling vegetables followed by a rolling boil and the smell of a long, low simmer that follows….  It’s extremely romantic to me; in these moments my kitchen is a time machine that magically whisks me away to the fantasy of old world Europe.   A fantastic way to spend the early morning when no one else has yet risen and the birds are just beginning to chirp.

I’ve always liked the early morning.   As a child I used to stay up to watch the sunrise because I preferred it to a sunset.  Sunsets had the connotation of ending and death whereas a sunrise was sad in its solitude yet carried all the promise of a new day.  I read a lot of poetry when I was younger and probably took things too seriously, but I do still find that to be true about the sunrise.  It’s beauty lies in the promise of the new day, fresh with no mistakes in it (yet).  The only problem with my love of mornings is the bad habit of keeping “gamer hours” which tend to keep me awake until the PM on the clock rolls around to AM leaving very little time to sleep.   Miles to go as Frost would say.  Still, as much as I love the music of the night, it’s the magic of the morning I find the most peaceful and enjoyable.  I’m so happy when I get it.  I wonder sometimes if this is something that I’ll always keep for myself.  I’ve never dated anyone who enjoyed even the thought of it and I wouldn’t want to litter these slow, still hours with small talk about silly things like the weather or film.  I want to imagine though that with the right person you could synchronize in the stillness and the simplicity of it.

The Early Girl cultivar, and yes this is a real tomato and no I didn’t use it deliberately for the sake of this blog entry, is extremely popular in California.  My botany knowledge is less expansive than my microbiology but basically it has to do with their ability to grow in extremely dry conditions.  The tomatoes dig their roots into the group deeper than most in order to seek moisture resulting in an uptake of more nutrients from the soil and an intense flavor.  As a result the Early Girl’s grow well in the drier, hot arid regions of the central and southern parts of the golden state as well as in the coastal Bay Area where summers are actually quite chilly but also dry.  So yeah I guess I have a fair amount in common with them past the name.  My love of both the bay and LA and my fervent attempts to sink roots down into the soil in one of those places….  See what I mean about how introspective and philosophical mornings make me?  Here I go seeking out more personal metaphors for life in food.

The thing about this soup is that with all the flavor from fresh basil, fresh corn, fresh tomatoes and the fiber from the veggies that you puree…you get all the thickness of a cream or roux-tightened soup without any of the milk fats or flour..  At 125 calories in a cup and 250 for a generous 2 cup bowlful with very little fat and sugar, you’ll find that it doesn’t taste like denying yourself.  It’s just a giant bowl of delicious veggies that slims while satisfying.

Tomato, Basil and Corn Soup Read more

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 778 other followers