Team BLC

Feed Your Soul "Green Soup"

Disclaimer: I am NOT a food blogger or a secret gourmet chef. One of my favorite stories is the week of cooking where I set off the smoke alarm, started a fire on the stove, in the oven and (surprise) in the microwave - (yes, actually flames). So, when I say that anyone can cook this and it tastes damn good -you can take that to the bank!

"I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am!" - Dr. Seuss

But green soup...yum!

This is one of my favorite "food as medicine" dishes to Feed Your Soul. It might not be pretty, but it is fabulous!

Responses to the soup:

"I love this!"

"That looks gross..."

"I kept dreaming about the green soup, do you have more?"

"I can literally see you more clearly as I sit here and eat this!"

"It's not terrible" (from my teen that wouldn't touch a veggie and hates asparagus - she now eats 1-2 bowls of the soup each day!)

The number one benefit is that it truly tastes delicious (surprise!) and is great for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack...

Other benefits include:

High concentration of green vegetables - you get a lot of veggies into you without having to sit there and eat endless plates of boring vegetables

Optimal whole food nutrients, vitamins & minerals naturally occurring in food

Blended (not juiced) includes the soluble and insoluble fiber in the veggies

Asparagus rocks, detoxifies, may help fight cancer, motivates urine to move through the body and is a natural antioxidant

Natural way to get your digestion "moving" - being regular is a good thing!

A few perks:

You can make in big batches and freeze it

Kids will eat it and it can be used as a veggie baby food

Serve with tablespoon of organic butter - the saturated fat aids the digestion and tastes ab fab

History:

I created this recipe as a way to heal after an intestinal infection in which conventional medicine advised me to eat rice, pancakes, pasta and crackers. Yikes! This soup jams as much healthy food into your system as possible with very little digestive efforts and thus no distress. Little did I know it would become a family favorite and staple in our home!

Recipe:

Makes 4 quarts of Green Soup

1-2 sweet yellow onions

3 bunches asparagus

3-4 zucchini

1-2 bunches celery

1 small bunch broccoli

1-2 carrots

3-6 cloves garlic

2 sticks of fresh rosemary (or 1 tablespoon)

1 bunch of fresh basil chopped (or 1/3 cup)

1 c spring water

2T organic butter to saute onions

Everything you cut up can be done thick and "not pretty" - it's all going to be blended at the end so take the easy way out - chop like a 5-year-old with a plastic knife - LOL (I like to make it a game and see how many batches I can make in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of green soup on the walls! NOTE: SIBO patients will want to use only the zucchini, celery and possibly a small amount of broccoli and/or carrots. Basil and rosemary is fine. It's a lot to cut out, but still tastes great! Consider adding homemade chicken broth and/or coconut milk (full fat).

Here are my down and dirty, quick and lazy cooking tips:

Toss a little organic butter in 8qt pressure cooker (I use Fagor)

Toss in onion and saute it with garlic, rosemary & basil

Fling in heaps of roughly chopped asparagus, zucchini, celery, broccoli, carrots

Add 1c spring water

Put lid on pressure cooker - heat on high

Once the pressure indicator button pops up and you hear the steam, turn the heat down to low and set your time for 4 minutes (yep, that's it!)

Timer beeps!

Release the steam - use as natural facial (just kidding - don't do that!)

When steam all out, open lid away from you

Take pot to cutting board, use a ladle and scoop cooked veggies into Vitamix (or other blender or food processor) and blend, blend, blend - Be careful - it's hot!

It will take several blender jar fulls and as each one is done I pour it into a big pot - this allows all the flavors to mix together

Serve a hot steaming bowl with 1T organic butter (yes, do it! It helps to digest the veggies, you need the fat and it tastes damn good - it will melt in the soup and make you happy!)

Add pink Himalayan Salt (do this too - the recipe doesn't have any salt in it and if you are eating whole foods then you need to add salt to your diet and it tastes double darn good!)

Take the big pot of blended soup, put the lid on it and put it in the fridge overnight - once cooled you can divide it into containers to freeze the next day (if you haven't eaten it all!) It will taste better each day as flavors deepen

This makes a thick soup - add more water if you want a thinner soup

Time:

Prep is about 12 min

It took about 15 min for the pressure cooker to build up the steam

Steam for 4 min

About 5 min to blend

Other tips, tricks, variations:

To make multiple batches quickly, saute all the onions separately in a different pan and just scoop some into each batch as you make it (this way you don't have to wait for onions to saute each time). This allows you to be a "Green Machine" blending one batch while the next batch is in the pressure cooker...

Don't have a pressure cooker? Use any other pot on the stove or shove all the veggies into a baking dish into the oven to cook - takes about 1.5 hours but you get to walk away...I like the pressure cooker best because of speed, it retains 90-95% of the vitamins and it looks cool

Serve it with some protein (our favorite is chicken or lamb) and you have the perfectly balanced meal. Serve meat on the side or toss into the soup - it's all good!

Want more of a roto-rooter response in your intestines? Eat a large bowl of the green soup ladled over raw spinach, kale and chard. Excellent mix of cooked and raw roughage. True "elimination diet" :-)

Freeze in flat, rectangular glass containers or wide-mouth mason jars

Okay, that's it my friends - now get chopping and start tossing veggies around that kitchen!

Serving Hands-On Healing,

Dr. Zachary