Tomato & Barley Soup

So its a new year, Wifey is on a great new healthy living mission. 2011 has been dubbed the year of Health and Well-being. Its oddly quite exciting. So far she's lost 3kg's on a weigh-less eating plan, and that's only in about 3 weeks. Now she's discovered Raw Food, and is researching all sorts of recipes for that.

I'm keen. Not that I think we're all about to become vegans, but I do think that we're going to do really well at finding what a balanced diet means to us this year. Clearly its going to be a process. But if we knew everything already, then there'd be no fun in the journey.

To start it off I don't have a raw food meal, but it is at least a very healthy meal. I found it in "Eating for Sustained Energy" by Delport & Steenkamp. Haven't really changed the recipe except that I put more curry powder in.

P.S. Because I'm a dumb-ass, I just put the SD card from my camera into the DVD player in my laptop. So until I get Computer Guy to break open my computer and get it out, there's not going to be any photos. Stop laughing! I kill you! (Later note: Thank you Computer Guy)

Ingredients
5ml canola or olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
5ml curry powder (Note: I thought 5ml was silly, so I put 15ml in, and its fiery. I think 5ml would give you a touch of spice, 15ml gives you HOT curry soup.) (Dumbass) (STOP LAUGHING!!! I KILL YOU!!!!)
1 chicken stock cube dissolved in
1.5 litres boiling water
1 cup lentils
125ml pearl barley
1 x 410g tin tomatoes, chopped with the juice
freshly ground black pepper
chopped fresh parsley, to serve

Method
Heat oil in a large pot. Add onion and garlic and stir while cooking gently, until just brown.
Add curry powder and cook, stirring for another minute.
Stir in the stock, lentils, barley, tomatoes and pepper. Bring to the boil, and simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the lentils and barley are tender.
Sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley and serve with some bread.

Lentil Note
I'm not sure if the recipe wanted tinned lentils or dried lentils. In an effort to minimize unnecessary chemicals I used dried lentils. You've got to put the lentils in a bowl, cover with boiling water, and leave for about an hour (while you're doing the other prep and mucking around a bit). They double in size after they're soaked. So you only need to use half a cup of dried lentils.

Nutritional Info per serving (Recipe serves 6)
Glycaemic Index 22
Fat 2g
Carbs 28g
Fibre 8g
Protein 12g
kJ 833

Weigh-less info: One serving = 1 1/2 carbs, 1 protein and free vegetable.

Veggie Soup

My sneaky plan to get my family to eat healthier culminated tonight in a vegetable soup. I've never tried making soup before, but my cooking skills have been getting better. I stumbled on this recipe at Mealsmatter.org - for Italian Bean & Grain soup. Shopping in Mauritius can be tough - there's really not that much variety in the shops, and I thought I'd be able to find everything in the recipe, so tonight I gave it a try.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil for frying
• Some carrots - finely chopped
• Some onions - finely chopped
• Some celery - finely chopped
• 1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
• a handful of fresh basil - finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic - minced.
• 1 can of tomatoes (undrained)
• 4 cups of chicken stock
• 1/2 cup of Farro or pearl barley
• 1 can of cannellini beans, rinsed
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Some grated Parmesan

Preparation

• Heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onions, celery, carrots, garlic, herbs. Cook for a little bit (3 - 4 minutes) until things start to soften.
• Add tomatoes and stock.
• Increase heat and bring to a boil.
• Add barley and beans, and season with pepper.
• Once it returns to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 40 minutes - until the barley is soft.
• Sprinkle each serving with cheese and serve with a bread roll.

I'm impressed. My mother used to make veggie soup when I was a kid, and this tasted exactly like that. Of course, I am a very amateur chef, and so I forgot to put the garlic in until I added the beans. Also I couldn't find pearl barley - so I tried it with durum wheat (which I've also never eaten) - but that turned out to work perfectly. I think durum wheat (or perhaps pearl barley) is the secret ingredient to make vegetable soup taste like its supposed to. It also helps bulk up the meal enough that one helping of soup and I was done. Oh, and I don't know what Cannellini beans are - so I bought a tin that said "Haricots Blanc" (white beans).

The plan is to get us to eat vegetable full vegetarian meal about once a week. I say vegetable full, because mac'n'cheese hardly counts towards boosting our nutrition. The problem is the perception that vegetarian food isn't going to fill the tummy, or taste good. I proved both counts wrong last week with a potato and chickpea curry, and tonight with this veggie soup.

Stoked.

And I wrote my first blog post - 2 gold stars for KingMuzza. Now, on to the weekend...