YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Garlic, Parsnip and White Bean Soup

Here’s a soup to, yes, satisfy your sweet tooth! One thing I really love about certain foods, like garlic, parsnips, and onions (tomatoes, too), is that their sweetness develops rather dramatically when you roast them or leave them to cook slowly. And, frankly, there just aren’t enough parsnip recipes around for my taste. Remember though, that if you want to be able to enjoy the subtle sweetness of foods like these, you will want to moderate your intake of sugar and especially corn syrup, both of which tend to overwhelm your tastebuds and raise your threshold for tasting the lesser (though more complex and satisfying) kinds and amounts of sweetness in fruits and vegetables. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Zucchini & Dill Soup

This is such a good project for the abundance of zucchini in your friends’, neighbors’ and coworkers’ gardens! You can make the soup now, with fresh zucchini, or you can make it in a few more months with frozen zucchini. Then again you can make soup now, and freeze that instead of raw cubes of zucchini. If you use frozen zucchini, remember to saute it a little bit longer. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Spicy Black Bean Soup

I’m trying to get you to eat more beans, in case you can’t tell. Peasant food, rustic. Old-fashioned. From the old country. Why did they eat so many beans? Beans are the only food on the planet that’s rich in both fiber and protein. This makes them very special, filling, nutritious. And inexpensive. So eat your beans! Thank you to Mark Bittman, and How to Cook Everything Fast, for the original version of this recipe. If you use canned beans, dinner can be ready in 15 minutes. Continue reading



YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Rice & Collards Soup

Last year I was asked to give a talk on vitamins and minerals. For lack of a more inspired approach, I decided to go in alphabetical order, plodding through all these micronutrients like an elementary school teacher. As part of the talk I shared ideas for good sources of the various vitamins and minerals. To my delight and surprise, I discovered that greens were a source of almost every vitamin I mentioned! Who knew? Greens even have tons of orange and yellow nutrients, like beta-carotene. The dark green pigment hides the lighter ones, but they’re still there. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Cauliflower Soup

Roasted Cauliflower Soup is the perfect vehicle for adding all kinds of heat (pepper, chili), nourishing fat (olives, coconuts, sesame, sunflower seeds), bite (onion, garlic), green (cilantro), red (tomato, chili pepper). Am I missing anything?!

Oh yes, it’s guaranteed to warm you from the inside out!! That’s important to remember when this Tuesday’s temperature is forecast to be minus 8 degrees. The good news? There’s a chance you may not notice if you eat this soup! Continue reading