Minified Meals: 10 Minute Soup

Last week, my husband had a cold. The kind of cold that leaves you lying on the couch, asking for soup. Like a good and devoted spouse, I promised to make him soup…only to realize that we were missing most of the staples. So…I improvised! Here I give you what I think was a rather inventive, decent and quick soup, made with things we had in the pantry and freezer.

Ingredients:

• 1 box Trader Joe’s vegetable broth
• 1/2 large bag frozen broccoli
• 1/2 medium bag frozen greens (collards, kale and mustard greens)
• 1 can cannelini beans
• 1 small can mushrooms
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• pepper (to taste)

It really does take ten minutes. Heat the vegetable broth to a boil on the stovetop, mixing in one cup of water. Add the frozen vegetables and let the water get hot again. Add the cannelini beans and mushrooms, and cook on medium heat for a few minutes. Add the pepper and soy sauce, and serve! It wasn’t by any means the most amazing soup I’ve ever had, but it was hearty, vegan, and a nice way to get a lot of vegetables into my diet in the dead of winter. It also made enough for dinner AND lunch the next day, for both of us. I suspect that it would also have been good with a dash of lemon juice, but we didn’t have any (nor did we have onions, carrots, celery…I wasn’t kidding when I said we’re low on soup staples up in here!)

Non-vegan addition: After eating the vegan version, I realized we had a few ounces of Trader Joe’s goat cheese in the fridge that wasn’t long for this world, so I melted it into the next bowl of soup. It was quite tasty!

This week, my husband is all recovered…and has passed his cold on to me. So I guess we can’t say that this soup staves off the winter crud – only that it makes you feel better in the midst of it! Even so, at least I wrote down the recipe so that he knows what to make me for dinner tonight!

Minified Meals: Broccoli Quinoa

It was a magical day indeed when I learned that quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) is a whole protein. That means it contains all of the essential amino acids a vegetarian like me needs to eat (the proteins we have to take in through food because we cannot make them in our bodies). Since our house is meat-free AND soy-free (thanks to my hubby and his soy allergy), whole protein is at a premium around here.

Today, I had another magical epiphany: quinoa can be prepared in the rice cooker! It works just like rice, with two parts water to every one part quinoa. Our rice cooker has a handy veggie steamer on top, so I chopped up some fresh broccoli, threw it in the steamer basket, set the rice cooker to “steam,” and voila! Dinner!

Season with soy sauce and serve! It took me nine minutes to prepare, cooked itself for about ten minutes, and was PERFECT. Now that is what I call a minified meal.