Great Day in the Kitchen

WooooHoooo!!  Success in the kitchen today.  That is so rare for me that I deserve a kitchen Grammy on Grammy Awards day.  Back when I was a carnivore,  I made a great vegetable beef soup that my kids loved too.  I put a roast in the crock pot, covered it with a can of tomato juice and added potatoes, carrots and cabbage.  After it cooked all day, I shredded the roast and boiled some egg noodles to put in it.  My secret ingredient was just enough Tabasco sauce to give it a little kick.

Today it is bitter cold in Kansas and we are expecting snow tonight.  I am secretly hoping for enough snow that the kids have a snow day so I can justify working from home tomorrow and not driving 45 minutes or better on very slick roads in the morning!  Anyway, today was food day--usually I do Saturday, but I took pics of 5 different kids yesterday, so that makes today food day.  I was really, really craving my vegetable beef soup.  So, I had some low sodium tomato juice in the cabinet and I decided to go for it without the beef.  I poured the can of tomato juice (large can, not the soda sized cans) and added about 2 cups of water into a big pot, chunked up the head of red cabbage I had, cut up some carrots and potatoes and threw in a bag of frozen corn.  For spices I used cumin, garlic cloves, low sodium vegetable bullion, dried onion (only because I don't like onion pieces in my soup--weird I know) and quite a bit of Tabasco sauce to give it just the kick I love.  I discovered kale this week so I put some kale in for its mega vitamin and mineral boost.  I will have to admit, when I was ready to eat the soup, I fished the kale back out because it looks disgusting cooked.  The soup could not have turned out better--it totally hit the spot and  tasted just like the old soup without the meat and noodles.  That makes a great kitchen Grammy day!

On the subject of kale, I have found in all my reading and research that this seems to be a kill many birds with one stone veggie; tons of vitamins and minerals ( I'll bet my family doc would never eat it--Mr. nutrition king!).  I got it to put in my leafy green salads.  It has a flavor that I really like.  I try to keep challenging myself to try new veggies and fruits that I have always thought sounded gross.  I am pleasantly surprised that I have liked some of them so far.  Just as I found I love pomegranates, it seems they are no longer in season--sucks!  I liked bok choy.  I bought a couple artichokes and cooked them today.  They smelled bad while they were cooking and I didn't like them.  I bought them because I like artichoke hearts on my salad but they all seemed to be jarred in oil.  The actual artichoke has very little artichoke heart and I didn't like the rest of it.  I did try it even though I felt stupid because I had to look up online how to eat it.  I just didn't care for it--I'll never be able to get past the smell.

As the new lifestyle continues, I surprise even myself with the ease at which I have taken to it.  Yay!