Tag: eating healthy

Cream of Potato and Spinach Soup

Soup is forgiving and easy to prepare making it a practical comfort food for busy autumn days

Fall is soup season for me. And … there’s no greater joy than unfurling my big green pot and crafting a healthy soup on a crisp autumn day. The goal was something simple and to use only the ingredients I had on hand at home. So I rescued a bag of potatoes starting to sprout and spinach beginning to wilt and transformed them into this wonderful soup. The beautiful thing about soup making is it is very forgiving and easy to prepare making it a practical comfort food for busy autumn days.

Ingredients

  • 1 medium yellow or white onion
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • 3 large carrots peeled and chopped
  • 1 1/2 cups fresh spinach
  • 3-4 large potatoes peeled and cut into chunks (I used Russets)
  • 4 cups vegetable broth
  • 1/2 cups raw unsalted cashews
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened unflavored plant based milk
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 1/4 to 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Directions

  1. Soak cashews in warm water for at least 4 hours (or overnight)
  2. Sauté the chopped onions and carrots in a small amount of water until the onions are translucent (about 10 minutes)
  3. Add the garlic and sauté for 30 – 60 seconds
  4. Add the vegetable broth and potatoes and simmer until the potatoes are soft
  5. Prepare the cashew cream by blending the cashews with the plant based milk in a high speed blender for about 1 minute
  6. Add the cashew cream to the soup then blend the soup using a hand or immersion blender
  7. Add the spinach and spices and cook for an additional 10 minutes
Serve with toasted egg free baguette slices or toasted Ezequiel bread cut into croutons
This is what the cashew cream looks like all whipped up! It is an excellent dairy-free alternative to cream, sour cream or cheese sauces. It can be used in soups, stews, curries, mixed in mashed potatoes, as a topping over roasted vegetables, as a dip by adding herbs, spices or garlic – the possibilities are endless.
Fall colors to inspire culinary creativity!
Happy Autumn!

Commit to Health

When I was in my 40’s I worked for a managed care organization as a chronic disease educator. I coached individuals with obesity, heart disease and adult-onset diabetes. The root cause of these conditions generally relate to lifestyle – sloppy diet and inactivity. At that time I considered myself to be a healthy eater with an active lifestyle. I felt that I ate better than 98% of all Americans. I was healthy, no chronic health conditions and a normal BMI. But when I analyzed my diet I realized I ate like crap. I was a cheese-aholic, hardly ate any greens and my daily sodium consumption was almost 3000 mg. per day. And “little miss active” turned out to average only 1000 steps per day. I can’t believe I’m sharing this with the whole wide world – but it’s true. From that day forward I made a committment to my body and myself. I cleaned up my diet, got moving and never looked back.

What’s with Western medicine anyhow? Why is it that you’ll never hear a single word about nutrition from your doctor until you get the chonic condition? That’s just ass backwards to me. Seems it should be the other way around to prevent conditions from happening in the first place.

Something I tell patients often is “Knowledge is power. The more you know the more you can control.” Learn everything you possibly can about health, wellness and chronic conditons. Then make a commitment to apply what you have learned into each and every day for the rest of your healthy life.

A healthy outside starts from the inside. Commit to your health today not tomorrow or the next. – Diana Zatt

Cold-pressed beetroot, ginger, lemon and black pepper juice. Like tumeric root, the chemical curcumin is also found in ginger root. Consumed alone you will still get the anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant benefits but adding black pepper makes it one-thousand times more potent. My apologies for the not so aesthetic appearance of the glass (juice inside the rim). I carried my concoction thru knee high deep snow shaking it up a bit. I might need to put “camera crew” in the budget for next year lol!