Hot Links: Curried Squash & Chicken Soup

My mom is kind enough to forward me emails containing recipes she thinks I'd like.

I found this one in a list of chicken soups. And it's Paleo! Yeah!

Curried Squash & Chicken Soup, courtesy of Cooking.com.

A few notes:

- I suspect you could use a canned pumpkin, or just roast your own squash if you are so inclined (I usually am so inclined for dishes like soups. If I make a pumpkin pie, I use canned pumpkin because most people can't tell the difference).

- I would use dark chicken meat. I have never had great success keeping white chicken meat from becoming tough in a soup-type application. Plus, the dark meat is where the flavor is! You can probably find some boneless thighs in a decent grocery's meat section.

- I would eliminate the brown sugar in the recipe. Two teaspoons won't make any difference in such a large soup, and if you use a fresh-roasted squash, I bet it'll be sweet enough! Might as well not get your body in a fuss over such a small amount of sugar, anyway.

- You could easily substitute Swiss or Rainbow chard for the spinach in this recipe. Whole Foods often has them even pre-cut in the produce section (at least, the Whole Foods in the Roosevelt neighborhood in Seattle does). But spinach also has plenty of vitamins, so I wouldn't worry too much.

This recipe intrigues me; I think I'll have to try it on Sunday (my traditional day to cook up food for the week).

***

As some brief life-happens notes... I came down with a cold last Saturday evening. It began as a sore throat, and went from there. I definitely credit doing Crossfit regularly with reducing the severity of the cold. What used to happen with me was when I got sick, I invariably got a respiratory infection of some sort, and went on antibiotics regularly.

I haven't been to the gym since last Thursday, and I am really anxious to get back. I knew that going would delay my return to wellness, so the only exercise I really got last week was meandering around my neighborhood after work. And I worked from home, too, after taking a sick day on Monday. I am grateful that my job allows for that (both sick days and telecommuting), and that my coworkers weren't subjected to watching me use piles of Kleenex and taking a nap during lunchtime.

Other mitigating steps I took to keep the viruses and bacteria at bay were taking tons of natural supplements:

- daily multivitamin
- 2 x 1000 mg vitamin C pills (you just pee it out, so I take one in the morning and one in the evening until the cold is gone, then I revert back to a daily 1000 mg)
- echinacea tincture (1 tsp, twice a day)
- oregano oil (2 drops, twice a day)
- cat's claw tincture (1 tsp, twice a day)
- twice-daily nasal wash using X-Clear nasal wash (saline + xylitol)

Apart from that, I drank tons of fluids - mostly iced herbal tea, hot herbal tea, and unsweetened flavored fizzy water. I tried to eat well, and last Sunday I made a chicken soup using ginger, lemongrass, and plenty of garlic. I also added sriracha sauce (an Asian hot pepper sauce) to help clear out any remaining sinus gunk. I avoided dairy because milk thickens mucous. (Another point in favor of So Delicious coconut milk!)

However, I had a couple of relapses... when I'm sick, I admit - my willpower goes to hell. I had a few sweets.. *sigh*.

Oh well. Back on the wagon!!! Nobody said it was easy, but I hope my blog at least helps make it more palatable.

My Lunch: Roast Chicken & Salad

Dinner tonight? Home-roasted chicken and salad.


First up, the salad. Don't tell me you can't make one. I used to think all the additions were the key - load up on cut veggies - but then I realized that a good salad has a balance between leaves and chunks.

What did I add? Celery, carrot, onion, cucolo (some farmer's market cucumber / melon hybrid - basically a sweet cucumber), red pepper, broccoli, arugula, and mustard greens. Topped with blood orange-infused extra virgin olive oil, and white balsamic vinegar. All the vegetables were organic. I purchased the arugula, mustard greens, and cucolo at the farmer's market today. The rest of the vegetables, except for the celery, were from my CSA box. The celery was from the store.

Roughly 3 packed cups of vegetables in this bowl!

Next up, the chicken.

It's been a while since I set off my fire alarm! :)

I had bought a frozen pastured chicken (a broiler / fryer) a few weeks ago at the farmer's market. Yesterday, I put it in my fridge to thaw. Today, I took it, used scissors to cut up one side of the breast bone, and essentially broke it's back to allow it to be butterflied and lay out flat on my pan. (Sorry; it sounds brutal, I know). Then I cut up a nob of good butter, and shoved that under the skin as evenly as possible. I then took some plain extra virgin olive oil, poured it over the skin, and rubbed it in. A generous sprinkling of salt and pepper on both sides followed, then I put it in my oven, breast up. My oven had been set to the "Broiler" option.

Once the skin on top browns to a lovely mahogany color, use some tongs and flip it over for another 10 min or so.

And I forgot to take pictures before I tore into it!

Oh, the carnage!!! Oh, the Huge-Manatee!

Here is a picture of portion sizes. My dinner & lunch for Monday.

Roughly 4 oz each, not counting bones. Or delicious, crispy chicken skin... om nom nom.

I had enough left over to make one more generous portion. The chicken was luscious - flavored from the butter, oil, salt, and pepper. It tastes like chicken! If I have it, I love shoving lemon zest and garlic underneath the skin, too.

The whole chicken cost me about $12 - not much more than buying a pre-roasted chicken at the store, and it was certainly of a higher quality, and tasted much better. And I got 3-4 meals out of it, so an amortized cost of $3-4 per portion of meat. If you are really enterprising, you could take the bones and use them in a stock. I don't have the patience for two dishes tonight, though!!

The rest of my lunch for Monday? A couple of containers of fruit - green grapes, red & golden raspberries, and blueberries. All organic, everything but the grapes were from the farmer's market I attended today.