Healthy Recipe 1: Kale Soup

Hello again lovelies! I've asked on my Facebook page, and there is some interest in me posting once a week on general health. I think that being healthy and beauty are pretty directly related, so I've decided to start doing this weekly health post. Eating healthy and exercising are obviously good for you, it promotes heart health as well as just the proper functioning of all your organs, but it also helps you look better. And I'm not just talking about losing weight, a balanced diet and exercise routine will make your skin more radient as well as your hair and nails. It also helps people feel more confident, and let's be real, confidence is a HUGE part of looking good.
So today's post is going to be a super healthy recipe that I came across a year or so ago. This is a recipe for kale soup, though you could probably substitute the kale for Swiss chard or collard greens. Some people find kale a bit bitter, but I think it's awesome in this soup. And kale is one of those super foods, it's loaded with so many vitamins and minerals and it has been theorized to help prevent cancer. Yeah, it's awesome. Kale is also known as borecole, I know that I do have readers all over the world and I don't presume to know what you call your greens, so those are the 2 names I found for kale. If you'd like to read more on how awesome kale is *Click Here* and read up on what WebMD has to say about this awesome green.

Now this recipe is great for promoting a healthy heart and a healthy waistband. This is loaded with veggies and could easily be made a vegetarian/vegan recipe by using vegetable stock instead of chicken. And if you're worried about the flavor, I know a lot of people don't like veggies very much, it's delicious. My husband hates vegetables, but he will wolf this soup down. Also, the measurements for the spices are approximated as I don't really measure my spices, I just add to taste. Also, prep time will vary from person to person. There's a lot of vegetable chopping involved, so if you have a food processor or a slap chop or something it will dramatically decrease your prep time.

Kale Soup

Prep time: Approximately 30 minutes

Cook time: 25-30 minutes

Ingredients

1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 large bell pepper, chopped (I use orange because it makes the soup brighter, but you could use whatever you like.)

1 large onion, chopped

1 cup chopped carrots

2-3 garlic cloves, minced

2 cups diced red potatoes

6 cups kale roughly chopped or torn into bite size pieces (1 good bunch of kale is generally 6 cups worth)

1 - 16 ounce can of white kidney beans (also called cannelini beans) rinsed and drained

4-6 cups of low sodium chicken stock

Salt and pepper to taste

Approximately 1 teaspoon each of dried thyme, sage, rosemary, oregano, and basil.

1. Heat oil in a heavy bottomed soup pot over medium high heat. Add onion and cook for 5-7 minutes until lightly browned. Add bell pepper, carrots, and garlic and saute for 5 minutes.
2. Add potatoes, kale, beans chicken stock, salt, pepper, and spices and bring to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
3. Add additional stock or water if soup becomes too thick. Let sit for about 5 minutes after cooking and serve. Enjoy!

This is a really easy recipe and it does make for quite a bit of soup. And this is one of those meals where you can eat pretty well as much as you want without feeling any guilt. It's just so good for you!! And it doesn't cost much to make either, I think all the ingredients for this meal cost less than $10, and that's assuming that you don't have potatoes, onions, stock, garlic and carrots at home. I do hope you'll try this recipe out and let me know what you think. And if make variations of the recipe I would LOVE it if you shared your variation with me. But I've got a Pilates video calling my name, so I'm wrapping this business up. Love me some Pilates... Til next time!