Rice-A-Roni Summer Soup

So… with the hot weather I’ve been really lazy about making dinners and since turning on the oven or stove is just about the worst idea I can imagine, we’ve been eating out a lot wayyyy too much.

Alas, last night, the wind showed up and the weather cooled, which meant it was the perfect time to use up all my fresh veggies that were close to going bad.

I call it “Fridge Soup,” however, admittedly, its not the most appetizing name, so for aesthetic purposes I’ll call it “Rice-A-Roni Summer Soup.” This recipe has a couple staple ingredients, but the rest is up to you, just use whatever you have in your fridge. It’s low-cal, super filling, and simply amazing with a couple slices of buttered French bread. Enjoy!

Rice-A-Roni Summer Soup

Rice-A-Roni Summer Soup (Or-What-Have-You)

**Note: This recipe made enough for 3 meals for 2 people—I froze what wasn’t eaten, more on that later.

The Staples:

1 box of Chicken or Beef Flavored Rice-A Roni (I actually used the Trader Joes kind)

2 tbls butter

1 Qt. of Low Sodium Chicken Broth

1.5 Qt. of Water

1 Chicken Bullion Cube

Roughly 6-8 cloves of garlic

1 tsp Thyme

Salt & Pepper

4 Bay Leaves

The Optionals:

The rest of the ingredients are totally up to you! I used EVERY veggie I could find, I figured, the more the merrier! Here’s what I used:

1 lb Ground Turkey (Ground Beef is great in this recipe too)

2 Carrots Chopped

½ Red Onion

1 Zucchini Chopped
1 Orange Bell Pepper Chopped
1/2 cup Chopped Green Onions

Some Cauliflower

Some Broccoli

Some Frozen Corn

Some Frozen Peas

A Big handful of Chopped Cabbage

Some more Garlic (because I’m a SUPER fan)

A few dashes of Cayenne Pepper

The Process:

1. In a GIANT pot I browned my ground turkey using a touch of olive oil on the bottom. Once that’s cooked, transfer to a bowl—but keep the pot on the heated stove.

2. Put the butter in the bottom of the pot. Once melted, put the rice contents of the Rice-A-Roni into the Pot and brown (just like it says on the package). Once the vermicelli starts to brown, add your Chicken Broth, Water, Bullion Cube, and Rice-A-Roni Flavor Packet. Stir.

3. Add Thyme, Bay Leaves, Pepper (I advise not adding salt until after it’s close to being done cooking, as there is a lot of salty flavors in the broth, bullion and flavor packet.)

4. Add back your ground meat and throw in any veggies you can find in your fridge. 

5. Bring to Boil. Let mixture boil at a low rumble for about 20-25 minutes, until you can see that the rice is fully cooked.

Soup in zip-lock, on paper towel, on cookie sheet, ready for freezing.

Yay! Frozen Soup!

Freezing:

I love eating this soup fresh, but I think I love it after it’s been frozen even more. The flavors all meld together and rice takes on the broth flavor even more. It’s jut delish! I am generally cooking for 2 people, so I like to use the quart size freezer bags.

With the help of a friend, ladle the soup into the ziplock bag until it’s a little less than half full (see how positive that was?). Then fold over the top to get as much of the air out of the bag as possible without spilling the contents and zip ‘er up.

I like to lay them flat to freeze, so that once frozen, I can stand them up like books and they take up a lot less of my freezer.

Before placing the bags in the freezer I also layer them with paper towels so that if any water/condensation gets on the outside of the bags they don’t freeze together. Note: Putting the bags on a cookie sheet, then taking them to the freezer makes your life a whole heck of a lot easier.

It's just SO Pretty!

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Comfort Food: Volume 2

Meatloaf. If you like meat, you like meatloaf, but you only like your mom’s meatloaf—it seems to be some sort of rule, that no one makes meatloaf better than your mom. 

I don’t remember my mom ever making meatloaf, so I’m on my own here. I understood the general idea behind it—meat, breadcrumbs, egg, seasoning, bake.

In the interest of the blog and my lifestyle, the goal here was to make an All-American meal but as Californian (aka. Low-Cal) as possible. The meatloaf recipe has tons of veggies and is basically as low cal as meatloaf gets, while the mashed potatoes have a low-cal, high-vitamin surprise that no one saw coming! This turned so good that I didn’t even take the time to take a decent photo of it. Enjoy.

Meaty Veggie Loaf

Ingredients:

Meat:

1 lb 85%-90% lean ground beef

1 lb lean ground turkey

6 cloves of garlic (more or less)

4 carrots, diced

3 stalks of celery, diced

½ a red or yellow onion, diced

1 c. whole wheat breadcrumbs

1 med. Egg

garlic powder

cayenne pepper

salt & pepper

Glaze:

1 c. ketchup

1 ½ tbsp. brown sugar

1 tbsp. Honey

garlic powder

cayenne pepper

salt & Pepper

1.    Preheat oven to 350 Degrees.

2.    Mix / Squish (with your hands) all of the meat together until it all looks the same color.

3.    In a separate bowl, combine breadcrumbs, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper (I didn’t include measurments—use whatever amounts you feel best, usually about 1-2 tsp. of each, maybe less of the cayenne)

4.    Crack your egg on top of the meat, add breadcrumb mixture and all of the chopped veggies, mix thoroughly with your hands until everything is mixed completely.

5.    Place meat mixture into greased bread pan and squish down into all corners, pack it as much as possible.

6.    Make your glaze by whisking ketchup, honey, brown sugar and seasonings together. Use seasonings to your liking. I made my glaze a bit on the spicy side and it really complimented the meatloaf well. 

7.    Pour glaze ontop of packed meat.

8.    Place in center rack in oven for 1 hour.

9.    Let sit for 2-5 minutes after taking out of oven.

Garlic Mashed (Cauliflower) Potatoes:

Ingredients:

2 heads of roasted garlic (how to)

6 small/medium red potatoes, quartered

1 head of cauliflower, chopped into florets

½ c. light sour cream (check ingredients—should be cream and cultures only)

2 tbsp butter (I used what we call “fake butter,” Brummel & Brown’s Natural Yogurt Butter)

¼ c. chopped scallions

salt & pepper

1.    Plan ahead, roasting garlic takes about an hour. I started this while I was preparing my meatloaf, I also have 2 ovens—so it made this step fairly easy.

2.    Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add potatoes, cauliflower and some salt. Boil until potatoes are tender (about 20 minutes)

3.    Drain water and add sour cream and butter, smash potatoes and cauliflower together with a smasher (you can also blend, if that’s what you like—I like my potatoes chunky, so I smash)

4.    Add garlic and scallions and smash again. Salt and pepper to taste.

The cauliflower in this recipe is really subtle, which is the point—mashed potatoes with fewer calories. The texture is a little thinner than regular mashed potatoes and my boyfriend said he could taste the cauliflower, but I have a feeling if I hadn’t told him it was in there, he wouldn’t have known. I also placed the potatoes on top of a bed of steamed spinach, to add some greens.

It takes a little time and planning to make this meal, but it was totally worth it.

It was filing, comforting and awesome! And everyone knows that meatloaf is even better the next day when its in between two slices bread, so this was also a great (and healthy) lunch.

Next up on the Comfort Food Files: Cajun Chicken Pasta

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