Tomato-kale-garbanzo soup

Tomato soup base was on sale this week. However, I can't eat plain tomato soup... it's a texture thing, I think. I was able to produce from my refrigerator some rosemary that needed to be used, garlic, and kale. Stella (my cat) picked the garbanzos from a lineup of black, kidney, and garbanzo beans. Good choice, Stel!

• 4c tomato soup (I buy the reduced-sodium kind and then add flavors other than salt... more on this later!)
  
• 3c water
• 1 bunch kale, chopped into 1-2" pieces (makes 3-4c)
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 2 Tbs chopped rosemary (I used fresh rosemary, dried would be fine)
• 1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp oregano
• 1 TBS black pepper

1. Heat olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot with a lid.
   
2. Add garlic and rosemary, cook until garlic softens.
3. Add kale and 1/2 c water. Cover the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until the kale is wilted. This looks like A LOT of kale... you'll be surprised how much it wilts down.
4. Add garbanzos, paprika, pepper, and oregano and stir together.
5. Add tomato soup base and remaining water until your soup reaches a soupy (rather than stewy) consistency... I needed about 3c water.
6. Bring the soup to a slow boil and then turn heat to low. You can serve the soup immediately, or simmer it for a while to let the kale soften a bit more, and the rosemary and oregano flavors to infuse (what's the fancy pants chef term for this?) into the soup.
   

A note on low-sodium products:
READ your nutrition facts labels! Many soups, seasoning packets, and other processed and packaged foods contain nearly as much sodium per serving as we need in a whole day! Yikes! There is some research linking high-sodium diets to higher blood pressure... and other research that disproves this (and suggests that only ~40% of the population has sodium-sensitive hypertension). Either way, there are a lot more phytochemicals in spices and herbs like rosemary, paprika, and oregano than in table salt, and they make foods taste SO much better! Pass the herbs, please!

Veggie Soup

I really like soups. I can spend 30 minutes cooking one night and have leftovers for 3-4 days, or freeze it for days I don't feel like cooking. Also, soups are extremely college-budget friendly - most of the ingredients are dirt-cheap at the grocery store! Soup is also a great fate for all those random veggies in the back of the produce bin in your refrigerator. You can pack a whole day's worth of veggie servings into one meal!

In the stir-fry post, I mentioned that fresh veggies are best. Carrots, tomatoes, and a handful of other veggies are exceptions to this rule. Cooking helps to break down the cell walls of the vegetable so more nutrients can be absorbed. One of these nutrients is lycopene. Lycopene is a red pigment found in tomatoes and other rosy fruits such as watermelon, pink guava, red bell pepper and papaya. Several studies conducted in recent years (at Harvard Medical School, among others) have linked high intake of lycopene with a lower risk of cancer and heart attacks. Cooked carrots, spinach, mushrooms, asparagus, cabbage, peppers and many other vegetables also supply more antioxidants, such as carotenoids and ferulic acid, to the body than they do when raw. Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=raw-veggies-are-healthier

You'll need:

• 2 TBS olive oil
• 2-3 chopped garlic cloves
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2-3 carrots, cut into rounds (~2c)
• 3-4 celery stalks, cut into 1/2 pieces (~2c)
• 2 medium red potatoes, cut into 1/2 -1 inch cubes
• 3 large kale leaves, de-stemmed and cut into1-2 inch pieces.
• 4c low-sodium vegetable broth
• 2-4 c water
• <1TBS pepper
• 2 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp chili powder
• 2 cans (~3c) butter beans... kidney beans... chickpeas... whatever you have on hand

1. Heat oil over medium heat. Add garlic, onion, carrots, and celery. Saute until onion is translucent and carrots begin to soften.
2. Add potatoes and kale. Cover with a lid and cook until kale reduces in volume by half (about 2-3 minutes).
3. Add paprika, pepper, and chili powder. Mix spices in thoroughly.
   
4. Add vegetable stock and water. You could add 7-8 cups of stock and omit the water... but water is cheaper and with all the vegetables and spices the extra stock isn't needed.
   
5. Cook until potatoes and carrots are soft, stirring occasionally.
   
6. Add butterbeans and cook until they are heated through. Adding them sooner will cause the beans to fall apart.

Nom, nom nom!

Very Verde Purple Power Pasta

I LOVE SUMMER!! There are SO many vegetables that are locally grown in my Fred Meyer right now. I went on a bit of a veggie shopping spree tonight. Yum :) I was, however, too excited about all the local produce to actually PLAN what I was going to make with all of it. So yet again, I present to you a completely experimental pasta dish featuring the green and purple veggies I picked out.

I picked up some kale at a local farm this weekend. Kale is like spinach on roids - full of beta carotene (one of those phytochemicals), vitamins A, C, and K, lutein and calcium. It's a cousin to broccoli and collard greens, and contains the compound indole-3-carbinol which helps DNA to repair itself and may thereby inhibit the growth of cancer cells.

I don't know that I'd ever eat it raw in a salad. It's a pretty thick leaf. However, I've put it in soups and pasta sauces before, and it's delicious. I've also heard of people making it into chips. Hmmm... sounds like something I'll have to try.

Here's the recipe:

1. In a large pot, saute' 2 cloves minced garlic with 3 TBS olive oil on medium heat.
2. Cut one eggplant into bite-ish sized pieces and add to pot. Cook the eggplant in oil until it turns a darker color and appears soggy.
3. Add one can of no salt-added tomato sauce and 1c water. I like the no salt added sauce because then I can add other seasonings and my pasta tastes more like the ingredients and less like a salt block you'd give a hamster.
4. Add 2tsp salt, 3tsp pepper, 2tsp rosemary, and a few dashes of some mysterious paprika that appeared in our cabinet that belongs to neither my roomie or I. Awesome.
5. Wash and drain 4-5 large leaves of kale. I use kitchen scissors to cut the leave in half lengthwise and then into bite-size pieces. These along with 4c spinach leaves are added to the pot. It seems like A LOT of green leafies, but they cook down really quickly. I also threw in about a cup of chopped red cabbage I had left over from the Husky quinoa.
6. Add a lid to the pot, and in 3-4 minutes the kale and spinach will cook down into the tomato sauce.
7. Add 2c kidney beans (I had a can and a half I needed to use). Here's the protein part of the dish. Remember how combining legumes with a grain makes a complete protein? Here I'm combining kidney beans (the legume) with the grain (whole wheat pasta).
8. Let the green & purple tomato mixture simmer, and bring another pot of water to a boil. Cook and drain 4 servings (2 cups cooked...) of whole wheat pasta per the directions on the box.
9. Put the tomato sauce on the pasta and NOM NOM NOM!

I've been interning at a nutrition and diabetes clinic this summer. The RDs there teach clients to only choose 3-4 servings (1 servings = 15g carbohydrate) per meal, and 1 serving per snack. One serving of pasta is 1/3 c cooked... that fits in the palm of my hand. I challenged myself to make this dish both veggie and diabetic-friendly, and I think I succeeded. 1/2 cup cooked pasta is about a serving and a half, and the kidney beans also count as a serving of carbohydrate (CHO). I didn't really miss the pasta (let's be honest, most of us eat more than 1/2 c pasta at a time) because of all the veggies. I think I'll add some scrambled egg to the leftovers to add more protein.