Have you ever heard of using complementary colors to decorate? Consider the impact of a bunch of lavender stalks, tied with a blue ribbon and placed on a lemon-yellow tablecloth. Or a green pillow to make that red couch really SING! Now imagine a bowl, maybe white or orange, and filled with sweet potatoes and kale.
Just as decorating with complementary colors increases visual interest, so cooking with complementary colors and ingredients increases the nutritional value of the foods we eat. It’s another way of including more colors on your plate. When you choose ingredients from around the color wheel, you decorate yourself from the inside out. The meal both looks and tastes more beautiful.
Complementary Soup
2 quarts stock (vegetable, chicken, turkey — your choice)
2 medium sweet potatoes, sliced thickly and quartered
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced thickly
1 bunch fresh kale, rinsed well, de-ribbed, and sliced into ribbons
salt and pepper to taste
Add 1 quart of stock (homemade or commercial – there’s a great vegetable stock at our local supermarket) plus 2 cups water to a pot. Add the sweet potatoes and carrots, and allow to cook on medium-high heat for 30-45 minutes until soft. Add the kale, cook 5 minutes until bright green, and serve immediately. Add salt and pepper to your taste. This soup is so simple, and yet so delicious. The stock is key.
Homemade Stock
Today’s post includes a lesson on making chicken or turkey stock. Yes, it’s worth it. The next time you make a chicken or turkey, do not toss the carcass into the trash. If you don’t have time to make stock now, put the carcass inside a plastic supermarket bag, tie it tight, and put it into the freezer until the weekend. Then proceed.
Place the carcass (frozen or fresh) in a large soup pot, fill half-way to two-thirds full with water, and add 1-1½ teaspoons of vinegar. Any kind is fine; I usually use white or cider vinegar. Turn the heat to medium, and cover. Once the top is too hot to touch for more than an instant, turn down the heat to the lowest possible setting, and leave the stock to cook for 6-8 hours. The less you bother it, and the less turbulent the boil, the better the stock. So don’t stir, don’t peek, and don’t turn up the heat. Go find something else to do.
After 6-8 hours have passed, turn off the heat and let the stock cool for a while. Open a clean dish towel across a colander (usually used for draining pasta), place the colander over a second large
pot, and pour through it the contents of the stockpot, bones and all, allowing all the liquid to drain into the second pot below. You will now have a beautiful clear broth to do with whatever you would like. If you aren’t planning to use it right away, pour it into labeled containers and put them into the freezer. The stock will last at least 2 months.
Note: This is a bare bones recipe, so to speak, and it’s how we make it at our house. But you can add vegetables if you’d like, such as a whole onion, a carrot, a clove of garlic, and a stalk of celery. Also, if you’d like, you can look through the contents of the colander afterward, and find bits of meat to add back to the broth.
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If you’ve never been on “Your Health is on Your Plate” before, and you’re not sure where to start, visit Lets Start at the Very Beginning to get a jumpstart on preventing diabetes and obesity in yourself and the ones you love!!
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