So in an effort to shed some baby weight, I have taken to eating a high-fiber soup for lunch everyday in the hopes and prayers that it will keep me full until dinner. It doesn't quite work until dinner, but it works long enough for me to wait until the kids are eating dinner. Then I eat a piece of whole wheat bread and a little peanut butter. That keeps me full till Josh gets home and we eat.
Let's be honest, I don't believe for a second that anyone is really interested in the whens and hows of my daily pb sandwich (can one slice of bread qualify as a sandwich?), just like I probably would not log on each day to check the timing of your tuna sandwich - unless, of course, you had the menu I am in desperate need of - the one that will help me lose 36 pounds by summer. Do you? Cause if you do, I'm in. And just in case anyone is wondering why 36 pounds and not another number - because 36 more pounds to go and I am back to one pound under my wedding day weight. Pathetic, I know. But I bought a denim skirt the week before my wedding that I still have and love and I would really like to spend the summer in that skirt. Doable? I hope so. At this point, I am down 8 pounds. I can just hope the downward trend continues.
Anywho, that was a total off-ramp discussion. We will now be getting back on the Soup Highway. This soup is a cinch to make and it makes enough so that I (and my girls, who shockingly love it - I mean, seriously, it is bean soup) can eat it for lunch four days in a row. So I only have to make soup twice a week and we're good. We have also branched out into lentil soup and split pea soup and I'm not sure the kids noticed the difference. Well, the girl kids. The boys wont come into the kitchen when the soup is cooking. Gotta start em young. I missed the soup boat with the boys.
Here's the how-to:
Saute one chopped onion and one clove of garlic in one tablespoon olive oil until the onions are soft. (Full disclosure: I am never sure if you mince, chop or just smoosh garlic. I just buy the kind that is already super-minced in the jar.) Add the bag of 16-bean-soup, a very small amount of salt and 8 cups of water. Adding soup mix is not a bad idea, but soup mix has so much sodium and I don't wanna retain any more water than necessary, ya know? Anyway, bring the soup to a boil. Lower the flame and simmer, covered* for about an hour, checking after 30 minutes to see if the beans are yet soft. Once the soup is done and has been allowed to cool, I use an immersion blender to puree the soup. This is completely unnecessary but my kids are little and I don't want to feed the baby whole beans, she's not much of a chewer yet.
*In or house, covering a pot is all relative. Sadly, none of the pot covers fit the pots, it's actually been a few years since they have fit properly. All was well when we lived in an apartment, but once we moved to a house and the stairs down to the basement were off of the kitchen, my then two and one year olds realized what super fun it was to throw everything (everything) over the gate and down the stairs, and after that, nothing was safe. No really, nothing. And so down the pots and/or the pot lids went, just a few items in a very long parade of loud-sounding things that bounced down those basement stairs. I still get a headache thinking about it.
You know how some parents put all the toys away from the living room floor each night before they go to bed? We used to walk up and down the stairs to the basement, bringing up the parade.
And so this all explains why none of the lids fit. If you too have a lid issue, do what I do. I cover the pot in a big piece of aluminum foil and then put the pot lid on top. It kind of seals everything in and lets the pot lid sort of fit when you jab it into the foil.
Ah yes, new pots, you ask? Would love 'em. There are so many things in a house, especially in a kitchen, that just go bad after a bunch of years. Oddly, they are all generally things that you might have received before your wedding. I have always maintained that it would be great to have a bridal shower every seven years. So on your seventh, fourteen, twenty-first and so on anniversaries, all your friends get together and buy you things like an egg slicer, an apple corer, a spatula. Anyone in? Cause I am.