Soup, Pasta, and Popcorn

As is my Monday custom, I made a raw soup and salad combo for dinner. This raw soup is one of my favorites, Kristen Suzanne's Harvest Soup. I have been making this soup for a couple of years now, and it never gets old. I just love it. It is savory, filling, and endlessly adaptable. Sometimes I add some extra veggies or greens in there, sometimes I don't. I usually add another stalk or two of celery, reduce the salt to 1 tsp, and reduce the flax oil to 1/3 cup. And I always, always, always top my soup with some raw pepitas (aka pumpkin seeds) and dulse granules. The pepitas give the soup some nice texture and crunch, and the dulse gives it a nice salty-smoky flavor.

Here are all the yummy veggies and seasonings, pre-blending:

Here's the soup, post-blending. Isn't it a lovely color? It's so creamy and velvety...yum...

Topped with some dulse granules and raw pepitas:

It's so good.

We had our soups with a simple salad of organic baby lettuces, carrots, cucumber, celery, pepitas, lemon juice, flax oil, and Bragg Liquid Aminos.

As I've mentioned, I have a 2-year-old son. I think he's a pretty good eater, but if left to his own devices, he would exist solely on raisins, Peanut Butter Puffins, soymilk, yogurt, and applesauce. Sometimes I am forced to resort to some "Sneaky Mommy" tricks in order to ensure my son is getting all his vitamins and nutrients. This is one of my latest creations that my son, thankfully, has been eating with gusto.

Maybe it doesn't look all that appetizing, but if you can get a 2-year-old boy to willingly eat a bowl full of lima beans, peas, spinach, butternut squash, broccoli, nutritional yeast, flax oil, and brown rice penne, well, you just don't give a hoot how it looks. This is a bowl full of veggies and penne tossed in my special "noochy sauce." :) Noochy sauce = nutritional yeast, Earth Balance nondairy butter, and some flax oil. My son loves it, I love giving it to him, and it takes me 15 minutes to make from start to finish. Winning!

I've also been eating copious amounts of my new favorite popcorn creation.

Spicy and Cheezy Popcorn
Makes: a lot

1/4 cup popcorn kernels
Nutritional yeast (aka "nooch"), to taste
Chili powder, to taste
Bragg Liquid Aminos, to taste

Ready? Pop the kernels in a hot-air popper. As soon as they are popped, sprinkle liberally with the chili powder, then the nooch. Spray a light mist of Bragg Liquid Aminos over the popcorn in order to make the chili powder and nooch stick to the popcorn. Devour the whole bowl by yourself while watching bad reality TV on Bravo.

I'll be back tomorrow with tonight's dinner. It was a meal that I'd made once before, but I tweaked it a little and it came out even better than the first time. I love when that happens!