There are so many reasons I love fall. The cooler weather. The sporadic but present Southern California rain. The Halloween candy bags filled with Reese’s Peanut Butter cups left for me to steal from my own children. Yes, I steal candy from my children, don’t judge, you know you do it too.
My absolute favorite part of fall is the ability to make soup and grilled cheese for dinner without breaking out in an unattractive sweat. Yes, that is important. No one wants to start eating a hot bowl of creamy tomato soup and start sweating into it. Yuck!
I am sure you are wondering how in the world do I eat tomato soup and grilled cheese while still making it healthy. I do and don’t at the same time. Yes, very contradictory.
As I mentioned in my last post, all of October, and now into November, I am eating all unprocessed foods. I was eating mostly ‘clean’ foods before, but I still consume a lot of processed healthy and unhealthy foods. I didn’t realize the amount of processed foods I was putting into my body until I completely took them out.
In the October Unprocessed challenge I didn’t eat anything I couldn’t make in my kitchen. I made tortillas for the first time and loved them! They were thicker than store-bought, but incredible. I made wheat bread (from veganbaking.net) for my kid’s school lunches. They went crazy for it because it was pretty much the tastiest, healthy wheat bread we have ever had.
It was hard at times to keep on the unprocessed route. I ate more peanut butter than I ever have in my entire life to fuel myself. I love me some PB so it was fine by me. I have never felt better in my life. I have never had more definition and fewer headaches. I never post ‘progress’ pictures, but I felt this time it was appropriate. This is what eating unprocessed for 30 days can do:
I’m pretty proud of myself! I’m actually starting to see ab muscles!
Because I was making everything unprocessed, some nights I was tired of cooking by the end of the day. Plus I had a lot of events that I was attending that needed new recipes or required me to cook. One night I was over it. I wanted something simple. So I grabbed one of the home-made loaves of whole wheat bread, some Kerrygold Dubliner cheese, roasted jalapeños and Kerrygold butter. The marriage of these ingredients created a melty, crunchy grilled cheese baby that I dipped into a pool of creamy tomato soup.
I loved the combo so much that I brought it to share at my monthly IEFB (Inland Empire Food Bloggers) meeting at fellow member Natalie Orozco’s (The Devil Wears Parlsey) house. Of course I had to dress it up for the event, since our meeting was a Halloween theme. Vampire blood test tube shots with Frankenstein and Bat grilled cheese fit in nicely among my fellow member’s awesome contributions.
Top: Silly Cupcakes from My Imperfect Kitchen, middle left: Autumn Harvest Croissants from It’s Okay to Eat the Cupcake, middle middle: Meatloaf Skulls from The Devil Wears Parsley, middle right: Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, bottom: Halloween Cookies with assorted frosting from The Devil Wears Parsley.
I hope you all had a healthy and fun Halloween. Do those two words even go in the same sentence with Halloween? Sure, why not? Even if they don’t I hope I have inspired you to take an unprocessed challenge of your own. It doesn’t have to mean only fruits and vegetables. Just make your own clean foods and see what changes take place. I dare you.
Disclosure: I was not compensated for any portion of this post. The Kerrygold cheese and butter was supplied to me by Kerrygold. All opinions and ideas are my own unless otherwise stated.
- Serves: 4-6 servings
- Serving size: 1 cup
- Calories: 129
- Fat: 6.8
- Saturated fat: .9
- Carbohydrates: 13.2
- Sugar: 7.9
- Sodium: 977
- Fiber: 3.8
- Protein: 4.8
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 large carrots, peeled and diced
- 1 large onion, diced
- 1 tablespoon dried basil
- 3, 28 ounce cans organic diced tomatoes
- 1 quart chicken stock (preferably homemade)
- salt and pepper to taste
- In a large, heavy saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add carrot and onion and cook until beginning to soften, 10 minutes, then add basil and cook until vegetables are completely soft, about 5 minutes more.
- Add tomatoes and broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30 to 45 minutes.
- Allow the soup to cool somewhat, then purée until smooth in a blender or food processor or using an immersion blender.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve warm.