- Weight: 1/2 kilo down. Not bad. It was a difficult week for compliance: a wedding, dinner at a restaurant, & weekend away. All these disruptions = less time for cooking.
- Energy level: Meh. No discernible change.
Soup will probably remain my fallback strategy; a potful can supply all dinners till shabbat. This week I was so scrapped for time that my primary considerations were speedy prep, using ingredients on hand, nutritious, and filling enough that I wouldn’t “supplement” with Snickers bars.
Luckily I already had the necessary ingredients for a tried & true recipe: the adzuki & spinach soup from my default cookbook, The Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health: More Than 200 New Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Delicious and Nutrient-Rich Dishes. [Terrible title. But nearly every recipe is great.]
Correction: I had almost all the necessary ingredients. In other words, I had beans.
Now normally I cook like someone with the knowledge gleaned from experience of…uh…11 days. I slavishly follow recipes. Haul out a cookbook each time I do anything more complex than brewing a tea bag.
But one of the mandates for this Flax-y regimen was to be more creative. Here was an opportunity! Okay, so I didn’t have broth; but surely water would do if I compensated with extra spices. I had just one spindly wilted scallion; but had a nice big leek. And although the recipe is called “Adzuki Spinach Soup”, and I didn’t actually have any spinach, I did have a whole lot of unidentified green leaves courtesy of the last delivery from Chubeza. Aren’t greens pretty much interchangeable? Hey, seaweed is green, too–& so healthy & recommended by Flax-y. So decided to add some wakame, too.
I merrily threw together the ingredients I’d gathered. And, heady with the prospect of burgeoning creativity, used “splashes” of the specified seasonings–plus a few others not even listed in the recipe. Instinctively! Without measuring!!
Ah, yes–every day in every way I’m becoming more & more creative.
The resulting soup looked quite similar to the one I usually prepare, maybe just a bit paler from the addition of leeks.
The smell, however, was quite a bit more…um…[looking for a euphemism here]…pungent. Guess that “splash” of rice vinegar was more like a downpour. And the wakame grew & grew & seemingly consumed some of the other ingredients.
Upshot: The soup is edible, but just barely. And I don’t have time to prepare an alternative.
It’s gonna be a loooong week.
Mindful Eating 