Limited Time & Another Soup

Lately it's been...well...summer time...and it's been full of fun things on both the weekdays and the weekends, which means limited time to plan and cook meals. So I have been doing what I usually do, cooking one big pot of something and eating it throughout the week. I always like making soups; they are chock full of veggies and are a great way to get a nutritional meal in a relatively compact way.

I know summer is not really the time you would normally think of soups, but this soup is so good and it's made from fresh summer squash so you really can't get much fresher! I also love it because you can cut everything up the day before and just put it all together when you are ready. Also, once it's in the pot, you can "set it and forget it" for a while. It's really no work at all!

Summer Squash Soup*

1 tsp olive oil
1 1/4 cup onion, diced
3 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp jalapeno, diced (I used a diablo pepper instead)
1 1/3 cup celery
2 cups gold potatoes, peeled and chopped
dash white pepper
4 cups chicken broth
6 cups yellow summer squash
1 tsp oregano
.5 tsp turmeric
salt to taste

(PS I didn't have turmeric and it was still good)

Heat oil, add onions and saute for 5 minutes. Add garlic and jalapenos and cook for about 2 minutes. Add everything else but the turmeric and let boil for about 30 - 40 minutes, until the potatoes are soft. Add turmeric and put in blender / use immersion blender to blend everything together.

You can put half of it into a gallon freezer bag and flatten it and freeze it for later, but it also keeps pretty great in the fridge (1 week +).

*Recipe from here. 

What recipes do you turn to when you're busy? What is your favorite summer recipe?

Squash Galore

Firstly, I want to say GOOD LUCK to everyone racing this weekend! There are a bunch of people doing the RW Half! Go get 'em! Also, a big fingers crossed, for Lisa, who is trying for a sub 4 marathon today! To everyone else, I hope your feet are swift and you end the race with a smile on your face. As you read this, I am currently running Broski's first  half marathon with him!!!

Once again, my "meal planning" consists of making a big pot of this and a big pan of that and eating it throughout the week. This week, the challenge was to use acorn squash, but since the email regarding the challenge came after I had already gone grocery shopping, I improvised. This week's big pot meal?

Butternut Squash Veggie Chili.

The good thing about this is that even though it doesn't have any meat*, the squash gives it some oomph, so it feels really hearty and good. Like I said in my first meal planning post, it's good to have staples on hand, since this week my challenge to myself was to NOT go grocery shopping, since there are quite a few things in the fridge that did not get used up as fast as I wanted last week. So, out came the staples and into the pot they went.

As always, I make enough so that a few can go in the freezer for lunches, and a few cups can go in the fridge for this week's meals. This recipe made about 10 cups of chili. 

Butternut Squash Veggie Chili

1 yellow onion, diced
2 celery ribs, diced
2 yellow peppers (fresh from the garden!)
4-5 garlic cloves, diced

1/2 butternut squash, cubed
2 cups of dried kidney beans
6 cups of water
1 packet of veggie stock
1 thai chili pepper, sliced in half

1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp fennel
1 tbsp Italian seasoning

In frying pan with a little bit of olive oil, sweat the onions. Add the celery, yellow peppers and garlic and cook for another 5-10 minutes*. Put cooked veggies and remaining ingredients in a slow cooker and cook for 8-10 hours on low. OR you can put them in a pot and cook for roughly 5 hours to achieve the same effect.

*You could also add ground hamburger to the frying pan if you wanted a meat version. 

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In order to get ready for the week ahead, I also baked some butternut squash in the oven. This will be added to either oatmeal in the morning, paired with yogurt for a fun dessert or used as a side dish for other meals during the week. I also cleaned out the freezer and found some chicken, so I cooked up a bunch of that to use during the week as well. That being said, here are this week's dinners.

Monday: Butternut Chili, Cabbage Salad (an old standby)
Tuesday: Chinese Chicken Salad (cabbage salad with chicken, nuts & Craisins)
Wednesday: Chicken Fajitas
Thursday: Roasted Chicken and Potatoes
Friday: Butternut Chili, Brussels sprouts
Saturday: Chicken Salad and Butternut Squash
Sunday: Dinner out / Left overs

What is your meal plan for the week?  What's your favorite way to use winter squash?

Lunch Time

If you haven't already, go here and see how taking stock is critical to easy meal planning! 

Next comes the meal planning. This week (and many), the plan went like this:

1. Shopping. Stock up on the things that are missing from this list. Usually this means going to buy a bunch of vegetables and fruits and sometimes a few of the staples. 

2. Planning. Depending on what is fresh, on sale and available, the weekly plan is made.

I know, this may be backwards. Shop THEN plan? To this I say, YES. I always have my staples so I have pretty much done the "planning" already. All I need to do after shopping is decide what I want to cook. 

Today I am going to only talk about the lunch planning portion. Each week, after seeing what the haul is for the week, I make a big batch of ___ (fill in the blank with a bean dish here). I also cut up all of my vegetables to go along with my meals. This usually means cutting cabbage or broccoli for salads, and cutting carrots and celery for snacks.

Cabbage Salad

This week, we had several vegetables left over from last week. This is normal. I always do a little bit of "overbuying" in order to have a quick snack or to anticipate extra hunger! But fear not, it does not go to waste!

Needing to be used up from last week: Red, yellow and orange bell peppers. Carrots. Serrano peppers.
Add to that from on hand items: Onion, Garlic, Garbanzo beans, Curry powder, Diced tomatoes, corn.
Put in Crock Pot for 8 hours and you get: Garbanzo Stew (recipe below)!

Garbanzo Stew

This was put into 8 one cup containers.. 6 of them go into the freezer and two go into the fridge. I like to put 6 in the freezer, so that way I will always have a variety to choose from. I usually eat 3-4 of them for lunch and then I have some from last week as well as having fresh veggies on hand so I am not always eating the same thing over and over.

Freezer mini meals

Remaining peppers were added to quinoa, basil and lemon to make a quinoa salad, which will be used as lunches as well. The I pair each one up with a various salad and lots and lots of fruit. I usually bring one or two pieces of fruit as well as some loose fruit, cut melon, grapes or berries. So this weeks lunches will look like this:

Veggies for quinoa salad

Monday: Garbanzo Stew, cabbage salad, fruit

Tuesday: Turkey Chili (last week's big pot meal), broccoli salad, fruit

Wednesday: Quinoa Salad, beet salad, fruit

Thursday: Garbanzo Stew, broccoli salad, fruit

Friday: Chicken Curry and Rice (week before last's big pot meal), cabbage salad, fruit

Saturday: Party food (@ my uncle's memorial)

Sunday: Clam House with Mom, Dad and Grandma for a  post race meal!

Garbanzo Stew: 

2 cups dry garbanzos
2 carrots, chopped
1 each red, yellow, orange bell peppers, chopped
1 can diced tomatoes
2 Serrano peppers, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
1 can of yellow corn
5 cups of water

1 tbsp Curry powder
1 tbsp salt
2 packets of Trader Joe's concentrated chicken stock

Mix everything together. Leave in crock pot on low for 8 hours. 

How do you do to use up older veggies before they go bad? What do you eat for lunch every day?

Check out Jill and Laura's sites for more meal planning tips! 

WIAW (4) & White Bean Chicken Chili

What I noticed when I looked back on my last month of posts, is that April must be bean month over here. First, there was Stone Soup, then Hummus and now, White Bean Chicken Chili. I guess it goes without saying that I eat a lot of beans? (so much so that Lisa sent me this recipe, which I will be trying soon!) I do eat a lot of beans, because they are cheap and easy, last a while, you can make a big pot of them, they are good and they are an excellent source of protein. Since I eat little meat, I use beans as my main protein source.

I have made chili before and subbed chicken instead of beef, but this time I wanted to also ditch the tomatoes and see how it went. The results are in; it was fabulous. So here is the recipe. Note, I often toss in a "little of this, little of that" so try this, and if it needs something, feel free to throw a little of your spice to the mix!

White Bean Chicken Chili 

Ingredients:
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 Yellow Onion, diced
- 1 stalk celery, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp flour
- 4 cups chicken/veggie stock
- 12-16 oz chicken breast, cubed
- 2 cups dry beans -- I used Navy (1 1/2 cups) & Black Eyed Peas (1/2 cup) (Soak these for a couple of hours or overnight)
- 1/2 cup lentils  -- I used red ones (just for fun!)
- 1 Serrano pepper (the green one about the size of your index finger), minced
- 1 can or frozen bag of corn

A pinch or two each:
- cumin
- oregano
- fennel
- red pepper flakes
- salt and pepper

Put olive oil in pan. Sweat onions, celery and carrots for about 5-7 minutes. Add garlic and chicken. Cook until chicken is done, about 10 minutes. Add flour, stir until mixture thickens, about 3-5 minutes. Add chicken stock.

Add remaining ingredients. Cook for about 2 hours, until beans are soft. Mixture should be slightly thick. Mine turned out Pretty. Darn. Spicy. I used the packets of red pepper flakes you get from a pizza place. 4 of them. But I like spice so it's all good. You may want to skip that part (and the Serrano) if you don't like things spicy! (idea for this recipe taken from here) **Makes approximately ten 3/4 cup servings. Each serving = 220 calories.

And now, What I ate Wednesday, hosted by Jenn at Peas and Crayons. 

 Breakfast: Oatmeal w/ pumpkin & sesame seeds & strawberries / coffee x 3 / gummy vitamins

 Lunch: Quinoa pasta with broccoli, mushrooms and green beans

Snack: coconut water / brownie bite / orange / chocolate treat / celery w/ hummus / apple (not pictured)

 Dinner: White Bean Chicken Chili / beets / cottage cheese (straight from the tub; yes, that's how I roll) 

As you can see, I eat a lot of snacks! I guess I like single servings of...a little bit of everything! I don't normally eat that much chocolate, but since I made those brownie bites, I have to keep making sure they still taste good, right? I am totally giving them away tomorrow. For real. I have no self control!

Also, I added a RECIPE page so that everything will be in one place. It's just a baby right now, but given time, it will grow. Check it out if you feel like beans. Or baking.

What did you have for breakfast today? Do you eat a lot of snacks? What is your favorite bean?

WIAW (3) & Stone Soup

Do you remember the book Stone Soup? If you haven't read it, the premise is that a bunch of travelers, who have only a large pot, arrive in a village and ask for food. The villagers state that they do not have any to spare. However, as time goes by, each villager adds their small item (veggies, spices, herbs) to the boiling pot of water with a stone in it, and it eventually becomes soup. In the end, everyone shares the soup.

I think this story is supposed to teach children to share, and that together they will have something wonderful. However, I don't want to dwell on that. What I like is that they just throw whatever any passing stranger happens to have handy right into the pot. One of my favorite things to make is soup, and although once in a blue moon I follow a recipe, generally I just throw whatever I have right into the pot. And Voila, I have stone soup. Sometimes it's vegetarian, sometimes it's not, and sometimes it has rice, or barley or quinoa. It almost always has beans. It is a cheap and easy way to have meals throughout the week. I usually make a big pot on Sunday and eat it for several days.

Today's stone soup recipe is just a guideline. If you have the ingredients, great. If not, you can substitute any bean, rice, pasta or meat you want. The key is the base. I usually do the base the same way and then where it goes from there is a surprise to everyone. (I apologize in advance for the crappy iPhone photos this week)

Stone Soup

Ingredients for base:
1 tbsp (roughly) olive oil (or any oil you like, or butter)
1 yellow onion, diced (Want an easy way to dice an onion? Go HERE)
2 or 3 or infinity number of garlic cloves, minced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced

Ingredients for soup: 
- 2 cups (dry) mixed beans
- 4 cups (you may need more) water or chicken stock**
- 1 can of corn

Optional: 
- 1 cup cooked or uncooked quinoa/barley/rice/pasta
- 1 large chicken breast, diced or shredded (or more, or a sausage..)
- Any other veggies you have on hand. Watch out for broccoli though; it tends to overpower the others.

A few notes before we start: If you are using beans, I usually soak them overnight, or if you don't have the time or you decide to make this late, you can use hot water and soak for about 2 hours, OR don't soak them at all; you will just have to cook everything a little longer. You can also used canned beans if you prefer. Today I used dried mixed beans, which you can buy pre-packaged. It usually consists of pinto, kidney, black, white, navy, black eyed peas, lentils, and green and yellow split peas). If you are using canned beans, I would use 2-4 cans, depending on how much soup, or how many different types of beans you want.

For the water part, I usually use the bean soaking water and add a little more. You want all the ingredients to be covered with about an inch or two of extra liquid. It will cook down. If you are using canned beans, go ahead and just dump the entire can into the pot, juice and all (if you are using black beans beware, they make the water kind of grey).  You still may need to add more water. **I am currently using Trader Joes Savory Broth Chicken Flavor which comes in a concentrated liquid form. It also comes in veggie. Or you can use a few bullion cubes if you like. The sky's the limit. Most of them are 1 packet to 1 cup of water, so add accordingly. If you use liquid chicken broth, just use that in place of water.

Directions: 

- In a large soup pot, sweat the onion, carrots and celery for about 5 minutes. Then add the garlic and cook for another 5 minutes, until the onions become translucent. (a quick how to on sweating veggies)

- Add the chicken (I am usually lazy and want to "set it and forget it" so I add everything all at once. You could also add the chicken near the end, once the beans are done).

- Add the beans, corn and stock/water.

- Cook for about 3-5 hours. 

- If you are adding uncooked quinoa or other grains, add them about 30- 45 minutes before the soup is done.

You could also just dump everything in a crock pot in the morning and it would be done by dinner time! So there you have it, stone soup!

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This week's What I Ate Wednesday is the traveling alone version. When I am traveling alone, I tend to eat more healthy than if I am with someone else. Maybe because I don't go out to eat as much? Here is one of my travel meal days from Washington DC! Thanks to Jenn for hosting!

 Breakfast: Single serving cereal, Single serving milk, Banana

Lunch: Chipotle Chicken Bowl 

Dinner: 3x yogurt with strawberries / Peanut Butter Lara Bar

Snacks: 2x Apple

I ate a lot of that yogurt because I bought the big size and then was about to leave, so I decided to just finish it off for dinner (along with a lara bar). And you thought I ate weird stuff... Pshaw.

What weird thing do you eat when you are alone? Do you have a "go to" one pot meal that you throw together all the time?