Today is Monday. I’ve been looking forward to today for a little while because it’s taco night with my roommates! It was going to start today around 5:30, so up until about 4:00, I’ve been studying for my exam this week in my critical care class, doing some NCLEX questions online, and just hanging around my apartment. Then I realized I had a meeting that starts at 6:00 that will essentially make me miss all of taco night (someone else was coming over so we couldn’t bump the time). On top of that, studying wasn’t going too well, I wasn’t really absorbing much of the information, and financial aid refuses to email me back about an important situation I need resolved. I was so frustrated that I kept reading one line of my notes over and over again and I was not absorbing that information at all. It was time to de-stress.
Today’s healthy recipe is a vegetable soup I found a while ago that actually tastes good and is way too healthy. I’ve altered it slightly to be my own, and I will later post a modification done by my culinary expert assisting me with this project. For this specific soup, I wanted a quick yet flavorful meal. It only takes about 35 minutes to prep and cook the entire thing. The longer you cook it, though, the more flavorful it gets. I get easily 6 servings of soup out of this recipe as well, and it’s perfect to take to lunch.
Stress level: 7/10
Yield: 6 servings
Time: 35 minutes
Vegetable Soup Ingredients:
Instructions:
Today’s healthy recipe is a vegetable soup I found a while ago that actually tastes good and is way too healthy. I’ve altered it slightly to be my own, and I will later post a modification done by my culinary expert assisting me with this project. For this specific soup, I wanted a quick yet flavorful meal. It only takes about 35 minutes to prep and cook the entire thing. The longer you cook it, though, the more flavorful it gets. I get easily 6 servings of soup out of this recipe as well, and it’s perfect to take to lunch.
Stress level: 7/10
Yield: 6 servings
Time: 35 minutes
Vegetable Soup Ingredients:
- 1 cup chopped carrots (big or baby)
- 2 stalks of celery, chopped
- ¾ white onion, finely chopped
- 1 medium zucchini, chopped
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp minced garlic
- 1 ¼ tsp dried thyme
- ½ tsp dried sage
- ½ tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 can no salt added diced tomatoes
- 1 can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
- 4 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup frozen spinach
Instructions:
- Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot
- Chop the carrots, onion, celery, and zucchini. Once the pot is heated, sauté the vegetables in the pot with the garlic, sage, thyme, pepper, and salt. Cook about 5-7 minutes, until onions are translucent and vegetables are tender. Stir occasionally
- Add the chicken broth and tomatoes, bring to a boil and stir occasionally
- Add the beans and spinach- cook about 5-10 more minutes, until the soup starts boiling again.
I love this recipe because you have to prepare most of the vegetables that go in it. For a quick recipe, I recommend the canned tomatoes because de-seeding and removing the skin from the tomatoes can be time consuming and potentially frustrating since it is so slippery. I also recommend he frozen spinach for this recipe because it is cheap and quick, and you don’t have to worry about the spinach wilting before you are ready to make the recipe. I had all of these ingredients sitting in either the fridge or the pantry for a week and a half without worry that they would perish in that time.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about chopping hard vegetables like celery and carrots. You always get that audible crunch whenever the knife slices through that vegetable onto the cutting board, and I appreciated that especially today. I also loved the transformations in smell as the different spices were added to the vegetables. Thyme and sage are powerful spices whose aromas go a long way. Normally, I would not opt to eat straight up vegetables for an entire meal, but the flavors they add to the soup make me keep coming back to this vegetable-packed recipe.
After making this recipe, I feel as though I can actually focus on continuing to study for my exam. I don’t feel as frustrated with myself for forgetting my meeting or planning taco night too early. I also resolve to call financial aid the next morning to see if they can help me over the phone faster than an email could. Once again, cooking helped me get back on track and put things into perspective. New stress level: 3/10.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about chopping hard vegetables like celery and carrots. You always get that audible crunch whenever the knife slices through that vegetable onto the cutting board, and I appreciated that especially today. I also loved the transformations in smell as the different spices were added to the vegetables. Thyme and sage are powerful spices whose aromas go a long way. Normally, I would not opt to eat straight up vegetables for an entire meal, but the flavors they add to the soup make me keep coming back to this vegetable-packed recipe.
After making this recipe, I feel as though I can actually focus on continuing to study for my exam. I don’t feel as frustrated with myself for forgetting my meeting or planning taco night too early. I also resolve to call financial aid the next morning to see if they can help me over the phone faster than an email could. Once again, cooking helped me get back on track and put things into perspective. New stress level: 3/10.