The night air has resumed its autumn chill, the fruit flies are finally leaving, and it feels good (and smells great) to have the oven on to bake pump
The night air has resumed its autumn chill, the fruit flies are finally leaving, and it feels good (and smells great) to have the oven on to bake pumpkin and apple concoctions.
Fall is officially here, and with it the cultural permission to eat soup, and do it often.
We have soup all summer long at the KS household, but at this time of year, I'll make even more of an effort to include a big pot of soup at least once a week.
Whether you're any good at meal planning or not, it's time to choose a “soup night” or make sure you check “soup” off the list every time you do plan a weekly menu. One big pot of soup, at least, every week can improve your budget, your stress level and your family's health in so many ways.
10 Reasons You MUST Make Soup Every Week
▪ Frugality – homemade broth is one of the least expensive things I can think of to make, truly making something out of nothing. ▪ Vegetables – we eat veggies with every meal, but for a pot of soup I feel like I chop more vegetables AND that people will more-or-less eat them more willingly, since they're all mixed in with other things. (If your kids pick out the veggies, try some pureed soups like this one with an immersion blender. ▪ Immune-boosting – the health benefits of real, homemade bone broth are almost staggering. It's why I started drinking mugs of it last winter, and why I'll go to great lengths to get it into my family's bodies regularly. ▪ Easy leftovers – soup is the easiest thing in the world to double a recipe, which means lots of leftovers for a second easy meal in the week, plus lunches. ▪ Easy to freeze – if you can't eat a double pot, freeze it in meal-sized portions. Soup always thaws well and it's awesome to have some on hand for lazy days. (Here's how to freeze in glass jars, and I'm updating that post this fall with some jar-breaking experiments I just finished!) ▪ Easy to reheat – soup is one of the easiest foods to reheat in a pot since you can't really scorch or burn it. It will sit on your stove waiting for the family to come to the table, you can reheat it quickly when you're rushing, and you can even leave it on for someone coming home late from work without worrying about it getting dried out or tough from cooking too long. ▪ School lunches – you bet you can send soup to school. Here's a great comparison post on thermoses from our affiliate partner, MOMables. I made sure to freeze single servings of three kinds of soup in small glass jars this September so I have an emergency freezer fund for days when we have nothing good around for lunches. I'll just have to thaw them the night before, heat in a pot, and off we go to school. ▪ Great for company – most people appreciate soup, especially this time of year, and soup is great for company meals since it can be made completely ahead of time and be waiting hot on the stove so you can greet guests and socialize instead of being in the kitchen finishing up a dish. ▪ Packed with minerals – real bone broth has calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus, along with gelatin/collagen and glycine, all of which work together to make it one of the most easily digestible, power-packed foods out there. ▪ No waste – since hopefully you ARE making homemade broth, and maybe even triple batches on the same bones, you want to make sure you use it up. A weekly habit will help you do that, and you can also use random leftover vegetables really easily in a soup.
Wonderful Soup Recipes
Tomorrow (Tuesday 10/8) I'll be starting a fall soup series with a brand new soup recipe every Tuesday for 6-8 weeks. Be sure to subscribe to the blog so you can get them all delivered to your inboxes, and in the meantime, here are the soups already shared on KS:
It's just about the perfect time to get in a lunch-packing rut, don't you think?
Since I'm not doing any other promos this week, I thought it would be fun to put The Healthy Lunch Box on a great sale for one day, and tomorrow is it!
Tuesday, 10/8, The Healthy Lunch Box will be just 99c on Amazon/Kindle and half off for the PDF premium package on KS. If you don't have it yet, don't miss it! (Did you know you don't need a Kindle to read Kindle books?)
Along with the soup series, follow KS this week for lots of tortilla information, and coming this fall is a healthy pumpkin pie recipe, homemade whipped cream comparisons, a whooping cough saga and a giveaway every week.
May your autumn be full of apples, pumpkin, real food of all kinds and family togetherness,
Best,
Katie
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