Meatless Monday - How To Cook With Vegetable Scraps - Carrot Apple Soup Recipe

Save Those Veggies Scraps

Wondering what this is?

I call it my flavour jars.  Every time I chop up veggies I put the peel, tops, seeds etc into jars and freeze them.  Once I have a couple of jars in the freezer I know I have enough to make a vegetable stock.
I use sweet vegetables for my stock

• Carrots
• Parsnips
• Red Peppers

Those are my go to vegetables.  You can also have onions and a few savoury items. Example, sometimes I will add leeks and others like onions and celery.  Just stay away from bitter vegetables, unless you like more bitter than sweet.

The trick is to really wash (scrub) your vegetables before you prep them.  Then you know when you put the scraps in the jars there is no dirt left in the mix.

These jars are just the beginning of the delicious CARROT APPLE SOUP recipe below.

Vegetable Stock To Carrot Apple Soup

You will need

• 8 cups of cold water
• Vegetable scraps (see above) I used approximately 2 jars
• 2 thick carrots
• 2 apples
• Coarse Salt, preferrably Jamie Oliver Thyme, Lemon And Bay Salt
• 2 cooking pots
• Mesh sieve / strainer
• Slotted spoon
• Stirring spoon

1. Start by putting your COLD water in a pot big enough to handle these ingredients.
2. Add the jar scraps.
3. Next peel both carrots, with the carrot peel landing in the pot.
4. Cut carrots into big chunks (see image below)
5. Put carrot chunks into the first pot (they will help keep all the veggie scraps from rising out of the pot.
6. Add salt a few grinds of the salt. Because I am a Jamie Oliver Food Revolution Ambassador I like to use Jamie Oliver Thyme, Lemon And Bay Salt it adds some zest!
7. Turn burner on high and get the stock heated.  When it is almost boiling turn down to medium heat.  You will know when it is almost boiling as you will see a bubbly foam begin to form.
8. Let cook for half an hour. Resist the tempation to stir the pot.
9. While it is cooking wash the apples, core and chop them into small thin pieces like the image below.  I leave the peel on because it gives you some extra fiber.
10. After half an hour, use the slotted spoon to remove your carrot chunks from the stock and place in the second pot. You may have to dig a little with the slotted spoon if your carrot chunks got to the bottom of the stock mix.
11. Now place your strainer over the pot like in the image below
12. Slowy start pouring your stock mix into the strainer until all the liquid is poured out of the stock mix.
13. You can now remove the strainer and first pot from the cooking area.
14. Turn the second pot with only the carrot chunks and strained stock on high and then immediately add the chopped apples.  Because the carrots were partially cooked in the first pot, this really cuts down on cooking time.  Once the pot begins to boil turn down to medium-low and let it cook until the carrots are tender enough to get pureed in the blender.
15. Turn off stove and pour contents of the second pot into the blender. CAUTION it will be hot and may splash!  It's better to puree in smaller batches. 
16. Set second pot back on the stove but leave the stove off.
17. Put the lid on the blender, but becareful as the steam will want to make it pop off. Puree the mix.
18. While you may be tempted to pour the soup from the blender pitchter right into bowls, it's not a good idea as the majority of the thicker puree is at the top and the liquid puree is at the bottom of the blender pitcher,. Instead pour it back into the second pot and give it a good stir, then serve it into bowls.
19. This receipe as you can see it made 4 cups of soup.

Best Salad Dressing - Just Five Ingredients

With summer in full swing salads are on the menu!

There are so many salad dressing recipes out there but I find they have so many ingredients! This means you are constantly balancing flavours.  If you put too much lemon then you need more sugar.  If you have to much garlic then add some lime.  For me simple is the way to go.

I made this salad dressing in 5 mins with 5 ingredients.  No zesting, chopping or juicing required.

Now remember I'm not great at measuring so you may need to do a bit of adjusting to your own taste.

The 5 Ingredient Salad Dressing

You will need

• 1 cup of Olive Oil
• 2 to 2.5 cups of Rice Wine Vinegar
• Half a cup (or less depending on how sweet you need it) of Liquid Honey
• A few of twists of the grinder of ground pepper
• A couple of twists of the grinder of salt.

** Note because I am a Jamie Oliver Food Revolution Ambassador I recommend his pink himalyan salt but any coarse salt should do.

What's next? Add it all to a mason jar. Secure the lid and give it a good shake! That's it!

I poured it over a spinach salad that had strawberries and walnuts. Again another easy to make healthy recipe!

Let's Hear It

Give it a try and leave a comment on how you liked it, or let me know about your easy salad dressing recipe! Then be sure to check out the other Healthy Recipes From Canadian Bloggers

Healthy Recipes For Food Revolution KW From Bloggers Across Canada

As posted in our MEDIA RELEASE were introduced to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day by being asked by the previous Kitchener Food Revolution Ambassador to help create a community event for the 2013 Food Revolution Day. Food Revolution Day is a world-wide movement that brings healthy lifestyle awareness to all. With co-operation from The Kitchener Market, Foodlink and several other community involved organizations the 2013 Kitchener Food Revolution Day was a success. In the planning of our second event for Food Revolution we were made aware that the Kitchener Ambassador would not be carrying on in that position for 2014. Being such an important awareness campaign for the area, we chose to take on the roles of Kitchener-Waterloo Food Revolution Ambassadors to continue Jamie Oliver's important messages of healthy food and lifestyle choices.  You can read the full Media Release to learn more about Food Revolution KW.





If you are in the Kitchener Waterloo area we would love to see you at our #FoodRevKW event at the Kitchener Market.  We are thrilled to have special guests Top Chef Canada Finalist Terry Salmond and World Boxing Champion Fitzroy Vanderpool take part in our event along with several other healthy living partners!

 

With our Food Revolution KW 2014 happening we wanted to know what healthy recipes YOU like to make! Below are list of recipes bloggers from across Canada submitted and feel free to add your own to the list! If you try any of the recipes be sure to come back and comment on how they turned out!