Vegetable Soup n Garlic croutons

This is an easy and healthy soup with simple ingredients and yet is tasty and flavourful. The toasted croutons made with fatfree baguette slices, rubbed with garlic adds the most needy crunch and attraction for this soup. A long 2 feet baguet would be just enough for a couple with 2 small kids. This soup can be made really hearty with lots of ingredients like cannellini beans, pasta/noodles and any other favourite vegetables/meats your family likes.

This soup works like a miracle for my kids when they r sick with diarrhea, as it can be made without oils/fats and vegetables are well cooked and also bread is a very good diarrhea safe food. My kids love this soup and when everything sweet and fat is restricted, they would savor this dish with great excitment.

Ingredients:

Celery sticks - 2 chopped thin

Onion - 1 big chopped small

Carrots - 2 to 3 chopped small

Tomato - 1 big chopped

Bay leaves - 2

cloves - 2

Cinnamon - 2 , 1 inch pieces

Oil - 1 tbsp (optional)

Chicken or vegetable broth - 1 QT, I use Swanson broths with low sodium and 99% fat free.

Method:

1. In a deep soup pot, add oil and saute the dry spices, cinnamon, cloves and bay leaves for a min, followed by chopped onions, carrots, celery, salt and pepper - cook until they are half done.
2. If you want to make it fatfree, instead of oil fill the pot with 3 cups of water and add spices n vegetables and cook until they are half done.
3. If u want to add any meat, add it along with the veggies and cook.
4. Then add chopped tomatoes and fill the soup pot with chicken/veg broth and water, enough to make the amount of soup you want. For the vegetables i added, it almost made 3 QT pot soup. Finally adjust the salt and close the lid for 5 to 10 mins and it should be done. If you add tomatoes along with the vegetables, in the end you wont be seeing any tomato pieces, but some rolled up skins.
5. If you want to make this soup an all in one meal, you can add noodles or pasta along with the vegetables and cook until they are done. Its upto the cook to decide, when is the right time to add pastas, as each one has a different cooking time.
6. You can serve the soup topped with some tender celery leaves or any of your favourite herb. Dont forget to serve toasted croutons, rubbed with a fresh garlic, this bread is the most sought after ingredient in this dish.
7. For small kids, just chop up the croutons into tiny bread crumbs and drop them in the soup little at a time, so that they too enjoy the crunch in all the bread pieces.
8. My son, wanted some broccoli in this soup, so i just dropped tiny pieces into the very hot soup served in his bowl and left it for sometime, that heat was almost enough to cook the broccoli. If u want it little soft, microwave it for few more mins.

Pumper Nickel Veg sandwich

This is an easy sandwich, made with the dark pumper nickel rye bread which has a sweet flavour and is little distinct from our usual wheat breads. We had this bread for the first time in a fancy restaurant, where they seved some freshly baked assorted bread rolls with some butter (as starters) until our order arrives. We liked this bread so much that, we hungry couple ate up every bit of those breads and had to carry our actual meal home.

This dish has one of my favourite leaves Arugula, which replaced lettuce in my sandwiches since a long time. These leaves tastes like mustard with a pepper like spicyness. I fell in love with these leaves at first bite. Arugula can be eaten easily in salads, soups and sandwiches.

Ingredients:

Pumper Nickel bread - 2 or 3 slices

sauteed Onion, pepper slices - 1 to 2 Tbsps

Arugula leaves - hand full

Low fat cheese slice - 1

Method:

Actually there is nothing to say here, except saute'ing the onions and peppers in a little oil and salt, red pepper flakes(optional). I make this stuffing ahead a save in fridge for 3-4 days use.

Toast the bread and layer the fillers in any order and any quantity as sandwich is supposed to be ones personal recipe.

I should say this is a very healthy recipe as it has no much fats. I figured out this recipe for my husbands lunch box, as i dont want the bread to become soggy and wet with mayo/mustard etc by the time he eats. All the moisture u need for this sandwich is in the pepper-onion mix and the baby arugula gives a nice delicate crunch and mustardy taste. And ofcourse cheese always gives a nice creamy taste and balance in any sandwich.

Variations: For more hearty filling lunch, i make a simple omlette with the cooked eggs or chicken topped with the onion-peppers and all the same remaining stuff.