I picked up the book again last week and skimmed a few pages. It's cold and flu season, so I figured any veggie-heavy recipe would be a blessing. I tend to cook ahead and soups are good for that.
The first soup recipe I found looked great. I hadn't realized how some of the recipes in the book were written for speed in mind. The recipe called for low-sodium tomato soup as a base, with carrot juice also (purchased, though some recipes call for fresh. I don't have a juicer, so that's not happening.) The vegetables he recommends adding are all frozen, and canned beans.
I followed the recipe almost exactly. I used some pre-cooked pinto beans in place of one of the cans of beans. I used fresh broccoli instead of frozen. I used fresh onion and sautee'd it in olive oil first. It was pretty good. A little more "solid" than most soups I eat, and am used to. Very filling.
It's important to note that the recipes make HUGE amounts...many of the other soup recipes make 30 cups of soup (I think I only have one pot that big) and say that they serve 8-10 people. Of course, in the doctor's world, you'd be eating 3 cups of soup as your meal. His calorie count on the daily meals is about 1800...all from plants. Anyway, it tasted good but looked pretty darned awful. It was also 2x the price of my Moroccan Lentil Soup. Still cheap though.
And I caught a cold anyway. But it's that time of year.
The other weekly meals were:
Tri tip in the crockpot - used for tacos.
Ham sandwiches.
So I made the soup on Saturday, we ate it that night with hamburgers, then froze the rest. I made the tri-tip on Sunday, we ate it Sunday and Monday, then froze the rest. We defrosted the soup for Weds, Thurs, and Friday, which we ate with scrambled eggs and cheese quesadillas. The rest of the tri-tip is still in the freezer. We will probably pull that out for the latter half of the week. Here's my leftover-burger lunch on Sunday:
Saturday: Tilapia and homemade tomato soup (Freeze rest of soup)
Sunday: Asian style meatballs with rice and stir fry veggies
Monday: Sunday leftovers (freeze remaining meatballs)
Tuesday: The usual (baked chicken tenders and broccoli)
Wednesday: Leftover soup with tri-tip tacos
Thursday and Friday: See Wednesday
For lunch, I am planning on making a big batch of pasta with asparagus, spinach, garlic, and olive oil. We'll eat it all week. Setting up my weekly meals in this schedule is making it MUCH less stressfull during the week. Though I have to say, eating the same thing Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for dinner and the same lunch all week does get pretty boring. But at least there is very little temptation to overeat these meals.
4 comments:
There are some soups I make that my husband says look (and smell!) like ass, but they are yummy!
Wow, that did make a lot! You don't have to answer this question if you don't want to, but what do you normally spend on groceries each week?
Happy Monday!
Hmm maybe I need to pick up this book! The recipes sound awesome. at the least, I need to make this soup...and store some of the 30 cups in the freezer for quick weeknight meals!
Hmm...I think my grocery costs are about $100 to $150 per week for the three of us. It depends on the week and depends on my energy levels. There are weeks where a lot of frozen Trader Joe's burritos and little cups of yogurt make it into my cart.
And then there are weeks where I make big pots of soup or score big sales. I tend to try and stick to free range, grass fed meats. That drives my weekly budget up. I have been buying more conventional meat lately simply because of lack of time and energy...it's an extra trip to the farmer's market or Whole Foods.
Okay, I checked ... looks like an average of $125 a week. Most weeks are anywhere from $85 to $145.
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