Summer Soup: An easy way to get your vitamins and minerals in one go

Everyone is talking about how to stay fit and healthy but hardly anyone is giving anyone advice on what fit and healthy looks like. In fact it doesn’t have a look. It is a feeling you get when you are exercising and eating the food that your body needs. I know you might be thinking “a Summer soup?” What is that? Well all it is a number of different nutritious vegetables, pulses and beans all blended into one. It tastes great and you can control what goes into your soup for it to be suitable for you.

I know that some of these ingredients won’t be suitable for some diets due to them following a certain way of eating or their bodies might not agree with the ingredient. Therefore, I want you to have an open mind and put an alternative if one of the ingredients for this spring soup doesn’t suit you.

Cost of a Summer soup

Eating a healthy diet can be cheap and easy. All you need to do is put in some effort and educate yourself with what is healthy and unhealthy. Then when you know what is good for you. You can now go to the shop and pick those ingredients out to make your soup. This soup will cost you around £6 to make and it will last you a long time because it makes a lot. Compared the the amount of soup you can get in a plastic container at Sainsbury’s or Waitrose. This is cheaper, more nutritious and tastes a whole lot better.

What goes into a Summer soup?

In a Summer soup there is 2 red or yellow peppers, 5 large carrots, 3 large tomatoes, 8 mushrooms, red lentils (soak them if needed), red kidney beans, 1 large onion, 4 garlic cloves, 350ml vegetable stock, 350ml of water, salt and pepper, 1 tsp of turmeric powder and 1 tsp cayenne pepper (if wanted).

  • Red or Yellow peppers supplies vitamin C/A/B-6, calcium, magnesium and iron.
  • Organic carrots supply Vitamin A/C, calcium and iron.
  • Tomatoes supplies vitamin C/A/B-6, iron, magnesium and calcium.
  • Mushrooms supply vitamin B/D, iron and selenium.
  • Red lentils and kidney beans supply your body with amino acids that make up part of a protein. you have to add whole grain bread to your meal to make it a full protein.
  • Onion supplies vitamins C, magnesium, calcium, iron and vitamin b6.
  • Garlic supplies Vitamin C, lots of vitamin b6, calcium, iron and magnesium.
  • The powders supply your body with more rich vitamins and minerals.

How to make it

First thing you need to do is make sure you’ve cut all the veg down into cookable sizes. Once you have done that you can start to cook.

  1. Place a big pan on the hop with some oil in it. Add the onions and the garlic to the pan and cook until golden.
  2. Once golden add the mushrooms peppers, tomatoes and the carrots.
  3. When everything has had time to caramelise a little on a low heat you can add the stock and the water.
  4. It will start to simmer but still keep it at a low heat. Then add the lentils so that they can absorb some moisture.
  5. Add the salt, pepper and all the powders you wish and cook at a low boiling heat for 25 minutes.
  6. Add the beans in when you have 7 minutes left on the timer.
  7. Once all is cooked you will want to let the mixture cool before you put it in a blender. When you’ve blended it up you can reheat the mixture and serve it with whole grain bread.

What have you learnt?

I know as a Weybridge based personal trainer the first take away from this blog is that it is easy and cheap to cook a nutritious meal. However, the one reason why a Summer soup is so good is that you can eat it at any time. You can have it frozen in the freezer for when you come home from work or for lunch if you’re able to work from home. The one thing I’d like you to notice is that you can easily batch cook something that is nutritious and quick. To heat up when you are feeling tired or don’t want to cook.