Recipe of the Week

Hi Everyone,

Hope your weekend is off to a great start!  I'm doing a little post today dedicated to healthy cooking.  As runners/walkers/yoga-istas/swimmers/shake-weighters (ha!), we need to eat healthy foods to make sure we're getting the nutrition we need, but we also need to like those foods! Right?! Who wants to eat nasty-tasting food, especially after a nice long run?! Not me!  Anyways, I'm a fairly loyal vegan so I have to cook a lot of the things I eat, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite recipes for healthy snacks and meals.


A little background as to why I chose to start eating this way... I used to get crazy migraines, like all the time, and if I didn't have a migraine, I'd have such debilitating headaches that I'd be taking four Excedrin a day (on a normal day!).  Additionally, I would come down with a cold or some sort of disgusting sinus problem at least once a month. I started doing research on these issues and I found that a lot of people who get awful headaches and just can't seem to kick the common cold also happen to be dairy addicts!  And when they cut out dairy, the headaches and colds would disappear! So fast forward a few weeks, I decide since I rarely eat meat anyway, I'd cut out dairy (and continue to not eat meat) and become sort of a "half-vegan" and try it for awhile. Well voila, within two weeks of my new diet, I hadn't had a single headache and the cold that I did have went away within 48 hours of this new clean eating. 


Ok, so here goes on the first recipe!  Anyone who knows me personally knows I LOVE tomatoes.  LOVE LOVE LOVE. I will eat them with ANYTHING. I also LOVE tomato soup, however most tomato soups are loaded with dairy, so I looked through a few different recipes and sort of combined all of them to make a delicious roasted tomato soup. I'm just warning you, this is divine.  I ate almost an entire pot of it in a day. Yeah, no kidding. And you wonder why I run? So I can eat :)


Roasted Tomato Soup


Ingredients:  

• 3 pounds of tomatoes (I used two pounds cherry tomatoes and one pound tomatoes on the vine, quartered)
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 10 whole garlic cloves (or 1-2 TBSP of the already pressed garlic from a jar)
• 3 TBSP olive oil
• 1 TBSP vegan spread (Smart Balance or Earth Balance OR plain old butter for non-vegs)
• 3 cups vegetable stock (or chicken stock for non-vegs)
• 1 red pepper (optional)
• fresh basil (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
• Place 2 pounds tomatoes, garlic, and onion on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. If you're using already pressed garlic from a jar, just mix it in with the olive oil and drizzle on top of the cherry tomato and onion mixture.
• Cook for 30 minutes, stirring halfway though.
• After stirring mixture in the oven, melt vegan spread over medium high heat in a large saucepan and then place the remaining one pound of tomatoes (I used the tomatoes on the vine for this part, quartered) and one chopped red pepper (optional) in the melted “butter”.
• Once the mixture in the oven is caramelized (after about 30 minutes), take it out of the oven and add it to the pot on the stove.
• After 10 minutes, add the any seasoning (ie. salt, pepper, fresh basil). Stir.
• Blend with an immersion blender (I left some chunks in it). Season with salt and pepper to taste.
• Add vegetable stock, simmer for another 10-20 minutes.
• Enjoy!

Since I combined my own taste with some other recipes, I figured I'd include a link  to the woman whose recipe I used the most. She also took some great pictures while she made her version of the soup. Here's the Roasted Tomato Soup Recipe on Being Chelsea's Blog. She also has many other great recipes on her site!  Check her out!

Well, that's all for now!  Hope you love the soup as much as I did!  I have a six mile run today.  Bleh!  I need to get excited about this running thing again!

Have a great weekend!

xo, c