Warm Ups - The Soup Edition

 

As the colder days are drawing in, I've been on the Soup, big time.. can't get enough of the stuff, which is great as it's not like I am craving doughnuts to keep the warmth in. So as they're really cheap and easy to make, I thought I would share my one of my vegan favourites. 

Throughout the year I have been filling up one of my notebooks with the meals I have been creating, ready to at some point type them out and get a book of thoughts and recipes together. It's the kind of thing that a bored single 46 year old woman dreams of doing, when she has too much time on her hands and the illusion that anyone else would want to share them. I am trying to put everything together as a fundraiser for MacMillan and Mind, so at the moment its a giant experiment of what has worked well, tasted good and might be easy for a non-cooking person to follow along with.

At the start of 2020 I decided to get on a health kick - Covid has made that an all consuming self development project and after a large amount of weight loss and a lot more mobility, I have found a few things that worked well for me. Having healthy 'easy to cook', 'store' and 'heat' food has been one of the easiest ways to make improvements.

I realised early on however, from friends social media posts, that not everyone knows how to cook for themselves and many are reliant on ready meals or takeaways. Having been a pub chef in a former era, some of those life skills have served me really well. Armed with a very basic slow cooker, or a high sided saucepan, I have made loads of stews and soups.. Brilliant for the cold snap coming in this week. Here's the 1st - more to come as I get on with the bigger project xx

Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato, Lentil and Ginger Soup

300g pack of Diced Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato

1 tbsp sesame oil

110g / 1 medium sized onion (diced)

100g red lentils

800ml boiled water

1 reduced salt vegetable stock cube

50g fresh ginger (grated)

1. Fry the onions on a medium heat, in a deep pan with the sesame oil, until soft and browned.

2. Add the diced squash & sweet potato (squds) and fry until the edges are soft.

3. Add the stock cube to the boiled water, then pour over your squds. Stir this well, to ensure you don't have burnt onions on the base of your pan.

4. Add the ginger and lentils to your pan and stir well, then turn the heat down to low and cook for around 45 minutes. 

During which perhaps watch an episode of Dave Letterman on Netflix and stir your soup occasionally to stop the bottom of the pan burning. I chose episode 3 - Dave Chappell

5. Once your show has ended, either use a potato masher, a fork or a soup blender to mush up any large chunks of squds, but most should have broken down by now.

Your soup is ready to serve up, or portion out for eating later!

This mix makes 4 big servings at approximately 136 calories per bowl

Good levels of Calcium, Iron, Potassium and vitamin C included.

Contains approximately 17.3g Carbs, 3.9g Fats, 3.8g Protein

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