Cauliflower Cheese Soup

My husband loves cauliflower and I love cheese. It seemed a no-brainer to me that I should try to find a soup with both of these ingredients. However, I was startled to find that most recipes with these two ingredients also had: sausage, a whole block of velveeta, or bacon.

The solution: I combined multiple recipes from allrecipes.com and read plenty of comments from these recipes and came up with my own soup. I am very satisfied with the results! :)


What I like: the vibrant colors of the veggies and the soothing taste of a wonderful broth. Yum!

Cauliflower Cheese Soup
Ingredients:
*4 cups of chicken broth
*One head of cauliflower, chopped
*3 stalks of celery, thinly sliced
*One large carrot or 8-10 baby carrots, sliced
*1/2 onion (or if desired: one whole onion), sliced
*salt
*pepper
*thyme
*paprika (optional)
*1 - 1.5 cups of milk/half n half/heavy cream (your choice!)
*4 oz. velveeta (optional), cubed
*shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:
1) In a large soup pan, combine broth, cauliflower, celery, carrot, onion, and spices. Boil 5-10 minutes or until tender.
2) Add milk-base of your choice, 1 cup of shredded cheese, and velveeta (optional). Simmer on low heat until blended. Taste and add spices as necessary.
3) Pour into bowls, top with shredded cheese. Add additional paprika and pepper (if desired).
4) Enjoy with your fave bread! It makes approx. 4 servings.


Comments:
*The recipes usually insist that you blend all the ingredients in a blender after it has cooked and before eating it. However, Paul and I like to see the veggies in our soup, so we did not do this. I thought I would throw the suggestion out there for any of you who are weird about texture!

*Even though I do not like velveeta as a major part of my meals, I do admit that a tiny bit does come in handy. I added no more than 4 oz. of velveeta to this soup to make the broth a bit creamier. It also tastes fine without it.

*For some reason, I LOVE the smoky-sweet taste of paprika with cheese soups, so this is my own addition. No other recipes for this soup called for that, so trust me, I am sure the soup tastes fine without it. But if you are daring, I highly recommend adding the paprika! I adore it!

*Use whatever milk/cream base you like. Last time I made this, I used 1/2 cup of heavy cream (leftover from Aunt Peg's Chowder recipe earlier in the week) and 1/2 cup of lactose-free 2% milk. It was great! Another time, I used only "normal people" 2% milk, and that tasted fine too. It depends on how creamy and thick you want your soup. Or how healthy you want it.

*The longest part of making this meal is chopping the veggies. When I make it, I have help from my darling husband. We talk about our days and chop the veggies together. It makes the time go much quicker. After all, the actually cooking takes less than 20 minutes! I strongly recommend chopping veggies with someone else, though that is completely up to you. Maybe other people can chop veggies faster than I can... :)

One last picture:

Aunt Peg's Chowder

Aunt Peg's Chowder

I found this recipe at www.allrecipes.com and I quickly fell in love with it. I made it my own recipe by changing a few of the things, so the recipe mentioned below is my version. Feel free to visit the site and type in 'Aunt Peg's Chowder' if you want to see another version!

What I love: the broth is clear, and the vegetables are unique for a soup: garbanzo beans and zucchini are veggies that I have never used in a soup before! I also love that the broth is partly made of wine, and I love wine! Paul loved this soup so much, he kept talking about it many days after the meal. This soup fed us for two days (keep in mind, it's just me and my husband, but my husband eats LOTS of food!)
The recipe:

• Olive oil
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 2 zucchini, chopped
• 1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, with liquid
• 1 (28 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes with liquid, chopped
• 1 (15 ounce) can of diced tomatoes
• 3/4 cup dry white wine...pinot grigio works best
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon dried basil (or more...eyeball it)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheese or mozzarella
• 1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
• Sour cream (optional)

Directions

1. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat, and saute onion until tender and lightly browned.
2. In a large soup pot, mix onion, zucchini, garbanzo beans with liquid, tomatoes with liquid, wine, butter, garlic, basil, and bay leaf.
3. Cover, and simmer for 20-ish minutes. Uncover, stir, and continue 20 minutes.
4. Stir heavy cream and Romano cheese into the vegetable mixture, and continue cooking 10 minutes.
5. Pour into bowls. Top with shredded cheese and a dallop or two of sour cream (optional) 
6. Serve with french bread

**If you want it even healthier, instead of heavy cream, used half and half.
**I have an obsession with tomatoes, so I add plenty of them. If you don't care for them, leave out the can of diced tomatoes. As you add the veggies to the pot, think about what ratio of veggies you like to see! I like to see lots of red. :)
**Depending on your preference, use either mozzarella or sharp cheddar. I like to use sharp cheddar to give this soup a bit of zing. But it has a delightful, milder taste if you add mozzarella.
**Do NOT add the cheese to the soup while it is cooking! It becomes a rubbery mess (been there, done that...learn from my mistake!)
**Depending on your calorie intake or desires, you can add less than 1 cup of heavy cream. The original recipe called for 1/2 a cup, but I found it wasn't enough to satisfy me. Use your judgement on the color of the soup to decide how much to add!
**I found that eating this soup with the leftover wine as a beverage makes this a more romantic dinner. Just a suggestion, of course!

New Beginnings

I have decided to change this blog. Now, instead of personally logging my exercise and diet routine, I will share recipes of healthy meals so that others can learn new, refreshing ways to eat and still be happy.

Here's the story: I love eating. However, as I grow older, my tastes have changed and I have found myself craving more and more healthy foods and less and less fatty, greasy foods. My husband and I have been eager to eat healthy meals, but sadly, it has been very difficult for me to find very many meals that leave our hearts, minds, and stomachs happy. 

Here's the thing: My husband and I are NOT vegetarians, but we do like to eat more meals with vegetables and less meals with meat. Don't get me wrong: we love steak and burgers, but those are nice to eat about once a month (if that). The rest of the time, we want to eat HEALTHY, and to us, red meats are too greasy and heavy.

I love reading recipe books and going to recipe websites to find new, exciting meals. Like I said, I love eating! However, I have been getting more and more frustrated in my search for healthy foods. For example, I will look at the soup section, thinking, 'soup is healthy' and to my disgust, most of the soups that I look at contain beef, bacon, velveeta, sausage, or something else heavy and non-healthy sounding that makes my stomach curdle while just reading about the recipe! I have wasted many hours of my life trying to find good meals. I usually love reading recipes, but only if I get results!

Thus, I finally decided that it is possible that other people out there are in want of healthy meals and that maybe I can help. After poring over recipes for days and days of my life, I have gathered a small but growing amount of recipes that use lots of veggies and less meat and grease. I will post these recipes in this blog, so that maybe other people who read my blog can rejoice and make their bodies happy while eating delicious AND healthy meals.

A few things about me that you need to know:

1.) I LOVE cheese.

I love good cheese, not that nasty processed velveeta stuff. So many of my recipes have cheese in them. I am not 'guaranteeing' that cheese is healthy, and I am sure more healthy-obsessed people will tell me that cheese intake should be limited. However, I like eating and I like cheese, so I eat a lot of meals with cheese in it. Deal with it.

2.) I LOVE broth-based soups.

Many of these meals are soups, with a clear broth base. It has been very hard for me to find many broth soups that are healthy, which really surprised me. I could probably eat soup every day (and cheese) for the rest of my life and I would be very happy. So you have been warned: many recipes are soups!

3.) I am NOT creative enough to make my own recipes!

Here's the problem: I know what I like, but I have NO clue how to add what I like together to make a yummy, healthy meal. So all of these recipes are taken from somewhere. I claim no rights to the creation of these recipes. I wish I could come up with my own recipes, but I cannot. What I promise, is that I will tell you where I got the meal idea. I may not make my own recipes, but I do eventually add to the recipes and make them my own. I will give you my custom additions to already published recipes. That's all I can do.

There are more things about me, but I think they will become evident from the recipes and comments that I write down in this blog from now on. If you have a healthy recipe that you don't mind sharing, feel free to email them to me or contact me! I love trying new foods, though I do admit that I am a bit picky about my foods as well...

~Raven

Jillian 30 day shred: Day 2, 3, 4, and 5

Whew.
This workout program is exhausting. Paul and I are sore everyday. But we are pushing through. If I can do all 30 days, I will reward myself by not exercising OR feeling bad about myself for 30 days. It's only fair. And I better see results! As I have been telling everyone, if I don't see results from this killer 30 day program (that promises results), I will eat cheesecake every day for 30 days because I deserve it! So there body!
I am sure this is not the right attitude, but I really really hate exercising. I like leisurely walks on nature trails with Paul and our dog. I like shovelling snow. I like gardening. These are nice exercising things for me to do. I dislike jumping, lifting weights, doing crunches, jogging, etc. These are boring and just brutal punishments. Blegh.

Anyway, we've been doing okay about eating right again. Kinda. Here's our last week:

On Friday, we did day 2 of the program. Then we went on a double date (a nice social event) at Red Lobster for their 'all you can eat shrimp'. Yes, that was bad of us, but so delicious. :)

Saturday, Day 3:
We exercised the program with 2 breaks. I almost puked from overheating afterward.
We made homemade pizza with goat cheese, red onion, spinach, mushrooms, and tomatoes. Yum.

Sunday, Day 4:
We exercised the program with 2 breaks. I almost puked from overheating again (I mention this so that someday, maybe I can read this and be proud that I can do the program without this problem). We also worked outside on the weeding/gardening/transplanting of flowers. I could barely do anything because I was so sore from exercising. Blegh. But I still enjoyed the outcome of having a pretty yard again. I made French onion soup for dinner. Yum.

Monday, Day 5:
We exercised the program with only 1 break! Woo hoo! I am proud of us. I did NOT overheat that bad this time! Woo hoo! We ate leftover French onion soup...still amazing.

Tuesday (Today):
Paul is off on a overnight camping trip with his students. So I am eating with our buddy Rick and not working out. That's okay, though. It's good to take a day off to recover, since I can't even walk up stairs properly right now. We should be starting day 6 of the program on Wednesday, though! I will keep you posted!

Jillian 30 day shred: Day 1

Wow, it's been awhile. And during that long period where I have ignored this blog, I also ignored my health.
I do this all the time. I get all excited about being healthy and exercising, I don't see immediate results, I get discouraged, and then I think, well, if my body refuses to trim down, then screw this, I will enjoy my life and have fun! Because at the end of the day, I hate exercising. It's boring and I hate sweating. And I often hate eating healthy. I hate forcing myself to limit how much I eat. Because I love food.

Anyway, it's usually easier for me to eat healthy during the summer when veggies are cheap, I can get groceries more often, and I can actually sit around and make nice dinners. This doesn't happen so much now that Paul and I are busy working. We get home at 4pm and are busy doing chores, socializing, etc. so that dinners have mainly been frozen pizzas. I try to occasionally make something healthy, like today, we are having french onion soup and homemade bread. And tomorrow and Saturday we will eat leftovers of this meal. But for the most part, working means I don't feel like thinking about food. And neither does my kitchen helper Paul. :)

We decided to try to workout again. This time, hopefully with dramatic results. We have started the Jillian 30 day shred that is so popular right now. I don't like to do 'fads', but hey, if there is a program that pretty much promises results in 30 days, I will try that out! Maybe that will inspire me to keep working on staying healthy and trim.

Paul and I did day 1 yesterday. He is more sore than me, probably because his weights are heavier. And because he is doing T-180i or some kind of super guy workout on the nights that I work late. But I just finished my last night class for 5 weeks, so we should be able to workout every day for 30 days. We will see how it goes with today's workout!

Work work work

I have been too busy to keep proper lists of my eating and exercising habits. Since I last wrote, Paul and I have been devoting all of our time to completely re-doing our bathroom. So I have certainly gotten lots of exercise! I haven't always been eating well, since I have often been too exhausted to make dinner and we just order food or grab something at taco bell. Yikes.
We are getting closer to the end of our project. When that happens, I will try to keep better track of my health. Poor Athena (our dog)! She is used to going on walks almost every day, but for the last week she hasn't had a single walk due to our exhaustion! We need to get back on track for her sake as well as our own sanity. I would like a clean home again, after all!

*Whew* Back from camping!

I haven't been posting anything because I have been off camping and visiting my people in Michigan. Thus, I will just generalize a recap of the last few weeks:

While camping (approx. July 27-August 8), I ate mainly good food: veggies, crackers, few snacks, and approx. 4 liters of water a day(!!!). However, since it WAS camping, I did have some "bad" food as well: red meat (hamburgers one day, brats another, steak another, steak nachos another), smores (four total), and three times to the ice cream store. Yikes. I couldn't help the meat part, since I didn't want to insult my mother-in-law's food ideas too many times in a row. And you know what? I am okay with the four smores and three ice cream cones. You know why? Those are the only smores I had this entire year and I haven't had ice cream since May. And it's camping! Psh, this isn't making my conscience calm down. :)

Anyway, for exercise: Volleyball everyday! Lots of rounds of it, too. I also went swimming everyday and sailing six times as well as countless walks (at the very least, the long hike from the beach to the camping site everyday). So I still feel pretty good. I also went jogging on the beach once, which was exhausting, but it made me feel healthier.

Since we got home on August 10, this is my schedule:

August 11, Wednesday
I woke up late since we got home around 2am. Since we had no groceries, I skipped breakfast and went right to lunch.
Lunch:
Bagel and cream cheese
Water

Dinner:
Fish (cooked in a skillet pan with olive oil and lemon juice) with some tartar sauce
Stir fry veggies
Water

Misc:
No exercise, really, but I DID clean the house and drink a few more water bottles.

Thursday, August 12

Breakfast:
Coffee
Dry Cereal

Lunch:
English muffins (three slices) with mayo, spices, basil, moz. cheese, tomato
Limeade

Dinner:
Penne with Chicken and Gorgonzola sauce
Garlic Bread
Limeade

Exercise:
Worked on weeding my garden: only did 1/4 of it b/c it was so hot and so much hard work!

August 13, Friday

Breakfast:
Dry Cereal
Coffee

Lunch:
Same ole english muffins (three slices: yikes, gotta get down to two again)
V8 fruit juice

Dinner:
Leftover pasta
Garlic bread
Water (three bottles!)

Misc:
Went to a farewell party, had two smirnoff ice alcholic drinks. Had more water. No exercise today due to headache. Boo!

August 14, Saturday

Breakfast
Dry Cereal
Coffee

Lunch:
English muffins (three slices)
Water (two bottles)

Dinner:
Penne leftovers
Garlic bread
Water (three bottles!)

Misc:
Walked the mall for exercise. More water bottles. Also, had a free smoothie at the mall today. It was a fruit one, so maybe not as bad for me?