Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Soup and Samples

Again I have been rather slack on updating the blog due to general "busy-ness". Here is Saturday's post.

I was on a fitness course all day so left my house at 7am and got home at 8pm. I had planned my day well though and was well prepared with my food so I ate clean and for energy (half the day was exercise based)...as well as taste too!
Breakfast
overnight oatmeal with dates

Snack
I made my own simple trail mix of walnuts, roasted salted almonds and dried cranberries.
This was a good mix, made with leftover cranberries from a previous recipe. Usually they are expensive so once these are used up, I'll switch to raisins in the mix.


Lunch

Homemade leek and potato soup
small can of lemon pepper tuna
various free samples from store

I got this soup recipe from my mum and it's really simple but very tasty and filling:
4 large trimmed leeks, chopped and rinsed
1 med onion, chopped
2 med potatoes, chopped
50 g butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1.5 pints veg stock
275ml/10 fl oz milk or milk substitute
salt and pepper.

Preparation
1)ensure the leeks are rinsed well and any sand is removed
2)melt butter in dutch oven or large pan and add olive oil (the butter has a low smoking point so adding the oil stops it burning)
3)add onion, leeks and potato to pan and cover and sweat over med/low heat for 15 mins
4) add milk and hot stock and boil for 20 minutes
5) season and blend to desired consistency. If you wish you can remove some of the potato pieces prior to blending and then add them back in at the end.

I made a batch and planned to take some in my thermos so it would be hot for lunch.

It turned out to be a really warm day ( a nice change from the relentless rain of the past 2 weeks) so soup wasn't exactly the best choice but still I ate it and also a mini can of tuna for a protein boost. Prior to eating the soup, my colleagues and I were in a grocery/health store as some people in the group were buying lunch. It was heaven, there were free samples everywhere and they were delish! There were samples of breads and hummus and deli meats. We all tucked in and mmmm'd a lot over the tasty treats. Then the deli staff came out with a big tray of samples of their homemade shepherds pie!! Needless to say, I wasn't starving when it came to eat my soup so I only had half. I was also happy to find they stocked Cocoa Mole flavoured larabars too. You can buy Larabars www.larabar.com in most places now. There are many, many flavors but most stores only stock about half of the choices. The Cocoa Mole one contains cocoa ('nuff said),dates, almonds, walnuts, cinammon and chili. It has the perfect balance of sweetness and spicy kick! So far I had only found this variety in the US so I picked up a couple to take home. As I checked out the larabar website before posting the link, I saw they now have a chocolate mint version...I HAVE to track one of these down. If you have seen one, please tell me where!!!

I also snacked on some fruit during the day and some strawberry licorice that I shared with my co-workers. You just can't go wrong with strawberry licorice. And guess what? There is no dairy or eggs in it so it's on my list of cleared foods. Yay!

Didn't get home 'til 8pm and can't remember what I ate, probably just snacked on stuff. I didn't cook, I know that much.

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