How to Keep from Going Off your Diet with Home-made Soups!
Eat Soup instead of Fast Foods!
Haven't we all been there. You start a new diet. No more packaged foods, low-carb, no preservatives etc, etc. Then, you get busy, neglect to do your weekly shopping and the only thing left in your cupboard is packaged foods. It's 10:00 in the evening and the stores are all closed and even the restaurants have stopped delivering so what do you do? You end up breaking your diet, eating enough carbs for the week and stuffing yourself with unhealthy, preservative laden packaged food.
So what is the answer?
Home-made Soup is the answer!
Now, let me tell you I would have been the first person to object to this before I started making my own home-made soups. I used to hate soup. Yep, hard to believe but it's true. I hated soup because all I ever had were those terrible soups sold in cans and boxes, full of preservatives and mystery ingredients that no one can pronounce. I hated soup for a long time. Until one day, when I started cooking my own soups. Who knew soup could taste so good! Home-made soup is nothing like store-bought canned or boxed soup. It tastes wonderful, it has fresh ingredients that you put into it and it's good for you. Not only that but home-made soup freezes really well.
Freezing Home-made Soup
Freezing home-made soup into individual portions guarantees that you will never be stuck in the above mentioned scenario with nothing to eat except food that would last through a nuclear holocaust. Home-made soups can be made with lots of fresh vegetables and little or no carbs. Making your own soup is cost effective and even cheaper than buying those terrible cans in the store. You are, in essence, creating your own “fast food”. After-all is there anything faster than taking something out of the freezer and heating it up? You are also providing a way to preserve fresh vegetables. We all want to eat right but how many times have you bought a bunch of vegetables just to have them lay in the fridge and go bad sending your hard earned money down the drain?
What about Salads?
Salads are great but sometimes you just don't happen to have all the fresh vegetables available to make a salad. And, besides that making a salad takes a lot longer than heating up some soup. Soup provides an easy way to get your vegetables without having to keep hordes of vegetables in your fridge at any given time. Salads can also be very fattening and not that healthy if you are dumping preservative laden, bottled salad dressing on them. And besides that, sometimes you just get sick of salad, I know I do. Also, in order to make a salad you have to have a lot of fresh vegetables. I can't tell you how much money I've wasted throwing out vegetables that went bad waiting to be made into a salad. Moreover, there was a British study done that claimed that vegetables eaten in soup are actually more satisfying and kept one satiated longer than do salads or eating vegetables alone.
Anyone can make Soup
Sure, you will have to take the time to actually cook the soup. But, you can do it once a week and have a batch that will last you for a month if you like. Soup lasts forever (well not really forever but for a very long time) in the freezer. You can make several kinds so that you have a variety. The other thing is soup is easy to make. Anyone who can pop a microwave dinner in the oven can make soup. It's souper (get it souper) easy!
So, the next time you take a look at the number on the scale and you start to get that uncomfortable feeling like your jeans are going to bust open..think SOUP! Get a good cookbook or look up online for a good soup recipe or two and start your diet by making soup and you will be helping yourself to achieve your weight loss goal in no time at all. Instead of sabotaging your efforts, feeling like you want to jump off the G.W. Bridge because you just can't stay on your diet, you will be increasing the odds of actually reaching your goals and lowering that number on the scale with soup!
Here is my recipe for Carrot Soup. I like the soup spicy, if you don't you can substitute the habenero peppers for jalapeno pepper. Also, this soup is really good with home-made sourdough bread but if you are cutting carbs you'd better forget that I just said that!
Bon Appetit
Instructions
- Put oil in soup pot. Add peppers, carrots, onions, garlic and ginger. Saute for about 15 minutes, stirring to make sure nothing burns. Add tomatoes, bay leaf, bullion and cook for several hours. Add salt and pepper. After the soup has cooked for several hours, taste it and see if it needs more salt or bouillon. If it tastes good then get another pot and puree the soup, pouring the pureed mixture into a new pot. After pureeing add half and half to taste. If it's still too spicy add more half and half.
Souper Healthy Home-made Carrot Soup
- 1 Tablespoon Oil
- 2 Habenero Peppers
- 4 cups Carrots
- 1 Onion, Finely Chopped
- 1 Tablespoon Garlic, minced
- 1/2 Teaspoon Ginger, minced
- 1 12 ounce can Whole Peeled Tomatoes
- 1 Bay Leaf
- 4 cups Chicken Boullion
- 1 Tablespoon Fresh Parsely, minced
- To Taste Half and Half
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