Make It Monday: Healthy Mexican Soup, Sweet Potato Noodles, a Spiralizer & a Dryer

Tomatoes are an amazing fruit...or is it vegetable?...and there are many reasons why you should be eating them, or drinking them.  Remember V8?  Perfect snack, and there are generic brands now, so they're lighter on the budget.

Here is an article that lists 20 health benefits of tomatoes.  Some include:

Vitamin & mineral rich

Improve digestion

Helps skin & hair

Strengthens bones

Increase fat burning capacity

Here's a recipe that is chuck-full of tomatoes!

Mexican Soup

from Ashlee

1 lb hamburger, browned with 1 onion, and drained well (you can substitute chicken)

1 - 46 oz can tomato juice

1 - 15 oz can crushed tomatoes

1 - 15 oz can corn (not creamed corn)

1 - 15 oz can kidney beans

Season with:

2 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp cumin

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tsp oregano

Top with tortilla chips, cheese, sour cream, cilantro, & guacamole. (skip the chips, use fat-free sour cream, and go light on the guac to keep this lower in calories)

This soup easily gives you 2 vegetable servings for two cups, which fills you up and satisfies your taste buds!

Last week I told you about a new kitchen tool I purchased: it's a spiralizer.  I bought the Premium V Slicer on Amazon.com, and it was $16.  It is similar to an apple-peeler-corer-slicer, in that you spin the food item and it cuts using blades,  This is designed to make spaghetti-sized strands.  It is intended for people who do raw diets, meaning they eat 80% of their food raw, and 20% cooked.  This spiralizer produces "noodles" on which to serve raw vegetarian sauces.  Common vegetables to spiralize are sweet potato, zucchini, and broccoli stalks.

The first thing I chose to make was sweet potato (truly they are orange yams, but we can debate that later) noodles, with chicken and edamame.

I can tell already that I want the nicer spiralizer for $33. I just wish it was more compact.  My tiny kitchen has no space for occasional-use counter-top items.  The hand-held version worked well, but left a huge portion of the sweet potato un-spiraliz-able (word?).  But the orange curls sure were pretty!  You can dice the leftover cones and bake them for a side dish for another night.

UPDATE: If you don't have a spiralizer you can grate the sweet potato lengthwise on your large-holed grater.  It'll be more like hash than noodles, but with the same effect.

I blanched them in chicken broth for about 5 minutes to soften them to "al dente", or slightly crunchy.

I browned diced chicken in some olive oil, sauteed an onion, and added frozen shelled edamame.  At Smith's this is packaged as "mukimame" in the frozen vegetable case.

I browned the sweet potato a little to heat them up then tossed everything together.  It was delicious, flavorful, and beautifully colored.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but we're working on that.

Sweet Potato Noodles with Chicken & Edamame

from Emily

2 sweet potatoes (orange yams) spiralized

blanch in 1/2 cup chicken broth

1 large chicken breast, diced

1 onion, diced

1 cup frozen shelled edamame (mukimame)

1 tsp Italian seasoning or other dry seasoning mix (be creative!)

Brown diced chicken in 1 tbsp olive oil. Add onions toward end of chicken cooking, and cook until onions are clear.  Sprinkle on 1 tsp of Italian seasoning, or other seasoning mix.  Add shelled edamame and some of the chicken broth from the potatoes, and simmer until edamame is cooked, about 5 minutes.  Toss with the sweet potato curls and serve.  Makes 2 servings.

An important factor in eating a sustainably healthy diet is how good your food looks and tastes.  Food with color means it is full of vitamins & nutrients.  Food with taste means you are more likely to eat it and feel mentally satisfied.

There are lots of healthy ways to up the interest factor of your food.

• Blanch, saute, or boil veggies in chicken, beef, or vegetable broth.  Try regular or reduced sodium.
• Take a trip down the spice aisle.  There are a million+1 spice combinations in a bottle to sprinkle on your meat, veggies, or salads.
• Eat veggies that are deep in color. They are usually more flavorful.
• Use dry cheeses like Parmesan or Feta to dust your salads or vegetables. They have lots of pop!
• Use more black pepper.
• Fat-free dairy like sour cream & cottage cheese provide protein and calcium and are a great garnish for just about any dish.
• Try plant spices like ginger, garlic, horse-radish, & fennel (which tastes like black licorice).

I also have discovered a great thing: meal swapping.  I usually have left overs, and most of the time they sit in the fridge ignored, and boredom is a sure-fire way to derail your healthy diet.  But my neighbor, Ashlee, and I have been swapping a serving of whatever healthy meal we make for dinner.  It's brilliant!  I know she's cooking healthy too, and it's nice to have a change of pace, even though really I could eat the same thing for days.  I love trying new things and testing recipes, and this has been a fun way to do it.  So find a friend or neighbor and swap a meal!

In other news: our dryer died Saturday.  It was to be expected, since our washer went out a month ago and they are the same age.  For some reason the death of the dryer was much less traumatic for me than the washer.  We got the matching LG dryer and it will be delivered Thursday.  Luckily I had made it through most of the laundry when it went kaput, so I'm not in emergency mode.  I also made the leap and am paying a microscopic amount of money to have them take away the broken one.  No trailers for me this time. It feels positively luxurious.

Get creative today, and spice up your meal-time!