Fall Recharge Soup

Fall Green Recharge Soup

I am not a big soup lover, probably because when i was a kid and i wasn't feeling well my mom would always make chicken soup or some sort of soup.  So I suppose I equate soup with feeling sick and it being like a natural medicine.   The more I learn about food the more I realize that there is a lot of truth to the fact that food can be medicine.   After spending the past 11 days running around at the Toronto International Film Festival and not eating or sleeping right I was feeling very depleted.   I decided to make yesterday a recharge day to rest and refuel for the week.   In my quest to recharge I made a detox recharge everything in it big pot of soup.   I wanted to use as many different vegetables as I thought would work together to make a healthy and tasty soup.  I used some frozen Cookin Greens Athlete's Mix to save some time and get more healthy greens into the soup without the chopping.

Ingredients:

1/2 chopped cooking onion

1 whole red chili

1 large garlic clove

1 tbsp. tomato paste

1/4 cup red lentils

1/2 cup chopped cabbage

2 carrots cut into 1/4 inch slices

2 tbsps tomato sauce or chopped tomatoes

1 cup Cookin Greens Athlete's Mix (frozen)

1 tsp chili flakes

1 tsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp parsley

1 cooked and sliced Andouille or Chorizo sausage (optional)

2 small white potatoes chopped into chunks

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tbsp Old Bay Seasoning

Shrimp shells

Salt and Pepper to taste

3 cups of water 

Directions

I started with some shrimp shells that I had saved to make a fish stock and put them into a large Dutch Oven pot filled with water and salt and at a rolling boil I put the shrimp shells in and boiled for about 15 minutes with Old Bay Seasoning.  Once the shrimp has released the flavour from the shells you can remove the shells and start adding the rest of the ingredients.  Add the potatoes, onions, cabbage and carrots and cook about 15 minutes.  Add the lentils, tomato paste, garlic, chilli's, tomato sauce, smoked paprika and salt and pepper.   Cook for about 10 minutes and then add the parsley and cooked Sausage and red wine vinegar and the Cookin Greens.  Cook for another 15 minutes to release the flavour and defrost the Cookin Greens.    Cook long enough to blend all the flavours and keep the greens still bright.    The whole cooking time should take about an hour but you can cook it more or less depending on how much you want to develop the flavours.  I find that layering the flavours and adding the ingredients based on what takes the longest to cook is the best way to make sure it all blends together well and retains the best flavours.

Serve it with a great piece of french bread and you have a filling meal.

It will yield about 6 servings.

This soup freezes well and is great for those cold winter nights when you are out all day and want something to warm you up quick.

This soup is a great soup to get your protein and greens and give your body a great kickstart to a bit of detoxing.   You can omit the Andouille sausage and use vegetable stock if you want to make it vegetarian but the shrimp stock and sausage adds a lot of cajun flavour that boosts the whole flavour of the soup.