Day Seventeen: soup and lurkers

I'm a big soup fan. I like pretty much any kind of soup - let's not mention the miso aberration here - but my favourite is really thick, smooth, creamy soup that your spoon pretty much stands up by itself in. With the unfamiliar hot weather we had this summer, I didn't eat as much soup as usual, and enjoyed crunchy salads and lots of raw veggies instead. Now that it's turning colder again, soup is back on the menu.

I spent a while the other week reading the nutritional information on the back of every tub of fresh soup in Sainsburys. Yes, I am that person. I don't mind tinned soup but the fresh stuff is so much more appealing. A standard fresh pot contains 600g of soup - about 2 mugfuls. On a fast day 300g is enough for lunch, but it would be nice to eat a whole pot if I'm struggling with hunger, so ideally I was looking for under 100kCal per 300g.

Some you expect to be quite high - the protein in meat and lentils tends to bump up the calories. For example, Tomato, Lentil & Potato: 176kcal/300g; Covent Garden Best Chicken: 264kCal/300g. But even soups with just vegetables can be on the high side - Covent Garden Tomato & Basil: 126kCal/300g; Sainsburys Butternut Squash: 126kCal/300g. There are some that get close - the delicious Spicy Pumpkin Soup I had the other day was on 105kCal/300g.

However, as usual, the answer appears to be - make your own. Or, in my case, ask Dream to make me some. (Spoiled, much?) Last week she cooked up a batch with butternut squash, onion, carrot, sweet potato, garlic and a chicken stock cube that worked out around 50kCal/300g. The veggies don't need frying or any fat added at all, just boil them up in the stock and blend. If you don't mind a thinner soup, you could get even lower portion values by simply adding more water to your stock cube. 

Personally, I'm sticking with the almost solid version. When it's sitting on the hob on a low heat, the pockets of super-heated extra-thick liquid bubble up and pop with a satisfying squelch, like mud pools. But, y'know, tastier...

Today I'm eating a more indulgent version that is mainly carrot and sweet potato, at 113kCal/300g. Choosing the ingredients carefully means you can pretty much decide what calorie total you want, and of course it freezes beautifully. Between the mug of soup and a punnet of cherry tomatoes at lunchtime I didn't need anything else until dinner, so had enough calories to make my omelette* with whole eggs instead of just egg white and add a rasher of bacon. Bacon! On a fast day! Maybe I could get away with adding bacon to the soup...

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A few people have told me this week that they have been reading my blog and said very nice things about it - thank-you. But don't be shy! If you don't leave a comment I don't know you are there, and knowing you are there really does make my day. Just a smiley face or a 'like' on Facebook gives me a lift - it might be all the difference it takes to turn a really tough fast day into a super-breezy easy one. A big hello to my new follower, thank-you for your support! And the rest of you lurkers, go on, de-lurk yourselves!




* technically not omelette, sort of scrambled egg with a ton of chopped veg**, but omelette sounds classier.
** I know bacon is not a vegetable. I don't care.