Recipe: 3-4 Servings of Veggies per Bowl? Canada Food Guide would be proud!

To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup. – Laurie Colwin

Anyone who doesn't love vegetables is really missing something special.
Photo: comprock, Flickr ccl

Adult males need 8-10 servings of vegetables and fruits per day and females 7-8. If you’re trying to get all your daily servings of the various food groups you can see how sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge.

But what is a serving? A serving of fresh, frozen or canned fruit or veggie is 1/2 cup. If it’s a leafy green that goes to 1 cup – like a salad, not packed "tight." A normal apple is 1 serving and a very large one is 2 (1 cup...), for example, so you only have 6-8 more to go for the rest of the day,

One thing you will find is that you do need to be a bit creative to keep your diet interesting. There’s no surer way to kill healthy eating than for your food consumption to become repetitive and/or boring. Use the Canada Food Guide like a "shopping basket" for what you need to eat. How you combine your food it is entirely up to you.

Luckily there’s literally tons (no pun intended) of vegetable and fruit recipes to titillate the taste buds. In my foraging posts I’ve been trying to introduce you to unusual ingredients. That’s one way to vary your diet.

Photo: CocoteauBoy, Flickr ccl

Another way is to use interesting combinations. One such recipe off the top of my head is black bean and pineapple enchiladas. Not only do they have a fruit and veg/protien but the salsa to accompany them has tomatoes and other veggies, there's cheese on top, they're wrapped in 1 serving of grain each... See what I mean?

I will be posting this recipe the near future.

A third way is to vary your cooking is with what I would call veggie “bombs.” One such bomb is minestrone. I posted a recipe for Genovese Minestrone earlier in the year that had no tomatoes but used pesto for its flavour carrier. Another way to “bomb” is to make vegetable dense puréed soups. Highly flavourful and highly nutritious.

Red peppers were on sale at the grocers last week, so it was time to do fire roasted red pepper soup. Pay attention to the sale items, use your creativity and you can dine well for less and keep your menus varied.

Recipe: Fire Roasted* Red Pepper Soup

Prep: 10 min  |  Broil: 5-10 min  |  Cook: 15 min

4 red peppers

1 large red onion

1 cup daikon (or other radish), cut into slices

3 garlic cloves, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

1-1/2 cups pre-cooked potato, cubed

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp basil

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

4 cups chicken stock

1 tbsp tomato paste

salt

pepper

* If you wish to truly fire roast, disregard the oven broiling directions and roast the veggies on your barbecue until blackened. Directions given are for broiling, which you can do indoors year round. Fire does give a better flavour.

Preheat the oven to broil and move a rack to broiler setting.

Cut the red peppers in half and remove the stems and seeds. Slice the onion into thick pieces. Arrange the red pepper skin side up, onion and daikon on a baking sheet. Broil until the peppers begin to show some scorching.

Remove from the oven and place the vegetables and garlic in a large stock pot. Add the olive oil and cook until vegetables begin to colour from the pan. 

Add the stock, tomato paste, herbs and red pepper flakes to the vegetables. bring to a boil, reduce the heat and let simmer for 5 minutes.

Using an immersion blender (stick blender), purée the vegetables in the cooking liquid until smooth. Add the potato and purée again. Cook for a few more minutes to blend.

Taste and add salt and pepper as desired.

Ladle into bowls and swirl some extra virgin olive oil on top of each bowl of soup. Serve hot with crusty bread.

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