Daily detox soup – Tomato soup

As January draws to a close, my detox soup trial must also come to an end. Since 30th December I have had a fruit smootie for breakfast, a large lunch and then a soup for dinner. I have also cut down on my cakes, biscuits and chocolate consumption – I would say by well over 50%. I have lost nearly 3/4 stone, my trousers feel like they will fall down and I can do my belt up a couple of notches. I feel trimmer and much better for myself. That’s not to say I will go back to my old ways. The large lunch and soup for dinner does not match the home routine. So I will still try to have a large lunch but will have a smaller portioned dinner. And I’ll definitely be having fewer sugary things than I normally do.

So the last soup was tomato soup, from BBC Good Food. Wow – there’s a lot of tomatoes! As with most of the soup recipes I’ve tried, you throw in an onion, carrot and celery (I haven’t quite worked out why celery is prevailent in so many soups! Please tweet me the answer!). Then you drop in the tomatos. I didn’t realise this but you need to take out the hard cores  -they don’t soften apparently. The recipe called for a couple of bay leaves, and by lucky coincidence I had some on the shelf (I had to blow the dust of the lid first!). Let it simmer for a 25 minutes, give it a blizt and there we have it – tomato soup!

Daily detox soup – Cooked beetroot soup

The great news is that I’ve gone down another notch on the belt. My shirts feel looser and my trousers felt like they are falling down. So something is going right!

Tonight’s soup is beetroot. Whilst browsing in the supermarket I saw some cooked beetroot. I love beetroot and thought a beetroot soup would be lovely, so wondered about trying it. I searched for a couple of recipes and this one seemed easy enough. I wasn’t going to bother with the croutons or goat’s cheese.

Very simple: soften the onions add in garlic, beetroot, stock and balsamic vinegar and that’s it pretty much done. You only need to bring to the boil and then simmer for a couple of minutes. It’s the quickest soup I’ve made yet!

I think there was too much stock as it was quite watery.  I think next time it needs to be thicker so either more beetroot or less stock. It was really yummy. I’m not sure what the vinegar brought to the table though.

If you’d like to suggest a soup for me to try, tweet me @jelly_wobbler.

Daily detox soup – Jamie Oliver’s mushroom soup

We had a packet of mushrooms in the fridge which looked like they were about to turn bad so I thought I’d use them for my evening soup. I did a quick search and, surprisingly for a Jamie Oliver recipe, this one looked pretty simple. I only had 300 grams of mushrooms so decided to half the weights. I was quite glad I did as I got a bit impatient peeling the mushrooms!

In went all the ingredients, including some parsley we had (very rarely do we have herbs, let alone the ones required in a random recipe!) and blitzed it all up when cooked. A VERY tasty soup, full of yummy mushroom flavour. Definitely trying this one again!

If you have a soup I could try (starting to go over the same tried and tested ones), then please tweet me @jelly_wobbler

Daily detox soup – leftover roast vegetable soup

We had a lovely roast chicken lunch with potatoes, broccoli, parsnips, carrots and red onion (which was in the baking tray soaking up all chicken juice). We had made too many vegetables and couldn’t eat them all so bunged them in a pan with some chicken stock and whizzed it up with a handheld blender when hot. Wow – this was an unexpected success. The roasted red onion really came through and it was probably one of the best soups so far!

An update on the weight loss. I can now take off two pairs of jeans without undoing the buttons and zip, and a suit which I had to breathe right in so I could do up the top button, is dangerously dangling on the precipice of my hips.

It feels great to fit into those jeans without the muffin top and the deep breathe to do up the button. My goal of wearing my white slim-fit shirt without it looking like the buttons will pop out is looking better everyday!!

Suggest a soup recipe for me to try @jelly_wobbler or in the comments below.

Daily detox soup – roasted garlic and aubergine (eggplant) soup

The thing I find about diet regimes and loosing weight (not just me but friends and family) is that are short-termism. One generally binge-diets, goes back to their usual ways and then goes back on another fad diet. My Daily Detox is no exception. I know I can’t sustain it but I’m trying to change my lifestyle and habits just a little bit. In the long run I do hope to change some habits – for example cutting down on my sugar intake, drinking more water but also having a large lunch and a smaller dinner (it has always been the opposite). It makes sense: I can burn off the larger lunch but a large dinner sits on my middle during a relatively inactive sleep.

So my trial on losing a bit of weight and being healthier is not about cutting out things completely. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Years ago I cut out chocolate, cake and biscuit completely for one month, and on the first day “off” I gobbled a whole box of Fingers in one go. What was the point in that?! By cutting out the things you like is no fun – you only live once – so I am having a few treats. I summarise that in the last three weeks I have probably eaten about 20-25% of what I usually eat sugar-wise. That is to be celebrated – more cake please!! Pizza, croissant, cake: as long as I am conscious, sensible and responsible it’s ok to have these things in moderation. Dieting is not about abstinence, it is about making better choices.

Today’s soup is quite ambitious by my standards. I was looking for a different vegetable to use when I was browsing the supermarket shelf and saw an aubergine. Intrigued, I did a quick search for soups with aubergine in and came across this recipe. It seemed pretty simple, just an age to make. Perfect for a lazy Saturday!

Once the garlic and aubergine had been roasted, the recipe said to peel them both. The skin came off like a dream! Really easy!

Roasted garlic and aubergine (eggplant)

Then it was the usual onions and stock, with some tomato purée and, 40 minutes later a great smelling soup. We don’t have half-and-half in the UK so some whole milk did the trick to add a bit if cream. And it was delicious! The garlic was so subtle it was perfect. Definitely trying this one again!

Roasted garlic and aubergine soup

If you have a soup I can try, tweet me @jelly_wobbler.

Daily detox soup – leek and potato

I’ve followed my smoothie – lunch – soup diet for about three weeks now. I’ve seriously cut down on my sugar/chocolate/cake intake, and I’ve lost about half a stone already. My trousers are feeling looser and my shirts aren’t so tight around the middle. Something is definitely working!

The next soup is an old favourite – leek and potato. Following on from the chunky chicken soup, I didn’t blizt the vegetables after cooking, so I had something more to chewy on. Really lovely, and really whomesome. Yum!

Daily detox soup – chicken from carcass

Hmmm. A lovely roast chicken on a Sunday afternoon with loads of veg, roast potatoes, stuffing and Yorkshire pudding. I’m not very good with carving chicken and I make a bit of a hatchet job with it. The carcass always goes in the bin. I’ve never done anything with it, mainly because I don’t know how or what. I know that you can use it to use stock or soup so I had a go at making chicken soup.

Searching online looking at the recipes, it seems incredibly easy. What surprised me was the length of time it takes to cook. You cover the chicken carcass with cold water (which meant a LOT of water) and simmer it for an hour. Then you add in the chopped vegetables (any will do – I used carrots and parsnips) and then simmer another hour! Then you throw in some parsley and job done.

I thought the simmering process would reduce the water and thicken it up a bit but it didn’t. The end result looked very thin and watery, with quite a bit of fat/oil peppering the top. You can see the yellow far around the sides in the photo below.

Unlike the other soups I’ve tried (which have been blended), whilst it felt too watery, there was some substance in there, something to chewy on, which made it feel more filling. There was so much though it’ll last quite a few days!

If you have any suggestions on a soup I can make, tweet me at @jelly_wobbler

Daily detox soup – squash and cauliflower soup

Here’s a soup I never thought I’d eat squash and cauliflower soup (unless of course someone ordered it for me in the restaurant game!). My wife was making Weight Watcher’s no-point vegetable curry and she had gone to the trouble of chopping up all the ingredients. Now, you know when you cook something you like, and then it have it lots and lots of times, until you get sick of it. Well, that’s where I was with Weight Watcher’s no-point vegetable curry. So with my latest daily detox soup jelly wobble, she gave me my share of veggies and make a soup for me.

And in the spirit of this blog, I gave it a go! Very thick soup and, to be honest, couldn’t really taste the cauliflower (a good thing). And of course I felt very healthy and satisfied.

Daily Detox Soup – Broccoli and Celery soup

My wife made the soup tonight. It’s not a combination I would have put together (and would probably eat again) but nevertheless it was edible and fairly tasty.

My detox plan is going well. A fruit smootie in the morning, a big lunch (today was cous cous and lamb meatballs) and soup for dinner. I had a slice of birthday cake in the office but that was it (which is amazing by my standards and judging by the amount of left-over chocolate from Christmas!).

Related articles:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24621394 – coffee or smoothies – which is better for you.

Daily detox soup – carrot and coriander soup

My best intentions of a soup a day were somewhat scupper by lack of planning and foresight as to what was coming up diary-wise. Nights out and lunches with friends meant I had to put my soup plan on hold.

Back to it today with a carrot and coriander soup. Really easy and just like the pea soup – carrots and coriander instead of the peas! The BBC recipe also called for a potato so, learning from my heavy, starchy last attempt I just put a small one in. Onions, stock and a large handful of coriander all blitzed together made a rather lovely soup! I feel healthy again!!!

Do you have a (easy) soup recipe you’d like me to try? Tweet me at @jelly_wobbler.