Paleo Loaded Turnip Soup (like Potato Soup, But Better!)

Compare a turnip root and a potato that are the same size.  The turnip will have less than half of the calories, less than half the carbs, and a whole bunch more calcium than the potato.  But cooked in soups or fried/grilled, their flavors and especially textures are practically identical!  That’s why I decided to make a Paleo Loaded Baked Potato Soup today – but with some modifications and substitutions that really crank up the healthiness.

Paleo Loaded Potato Soup (made with Turnips instead!)

1. One big or several small turnips
2. An onion
3. Chicken stock
4. Herbs/Seasonings (I used “Poultry Magic” seasoning mix, thyme, rosemary, salt, and pepper)
5. Other veggies from your fridge (I used garlic, carrots, celery, kale)
6. Toppings (Cooked bacon, green onions, Greek yogurt in place of sour cream, other finely chopped onions, and if you really want to – some yellow cheese)

Chop everything up into bite size pieces, then toss numbers 1 through 5 into a big soup pot to simmer for at least 20 minutes.  You want the turnips to be nice and soft!  To make the soup creamier, blend some of it in a blender then pour it back in with the rest of the soup.  Pour it in a bowl, top it with your toppings, and chow down!

Vegetable Chicken Bacon Stew

As scary as it was to leave a pot on the stove simmering overnight, I made my first chicken bone broth out of the carcass of a whole chicken I parboiled the other day.  The idea is just to cover the carcass with water, start it boiling, cover the pot, and then turn it down to simmer for at least overnight – mine simmered for about 24 hours.  Chicken bones are small and weak enough, that 24 hours of that extracts all the nutrients from the bones and lets them escape out into the broth.

I don’t have any fancy strainers or cheesecloth or whatever you’re supposed to use, but I did have a clean plain tshirt.  When I was done with boiling the bones and broth, I just laid the tshirt over a separate big pot and poured the first pot of bone-filled broth onto the shirt/into the second pot.  All the bones and chicken bits were caught in the shirt that I emptied into the garbage and immediately washed.  Poof – strained bone broth!  To which I added a ton of fresh vegetables, cooked chicken, a couple pieces of cooked bacon, and whole bunch of dried herbs like parsley and dill and sage and thyme and so on.  Yum!

Japanese Paleo: Nabeyaki Udon Soup

This Japanese soup isn’t exactly Paleo, but it’s not not Paleo either.  What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t have any of the “bad” foods in it, but it is very vegetarian and includes tofu.  See all those wonderful noodles?  They are made out of tofu (just tofu, nothing else), and they’re actually pretty darn good in a soup like this.  I found the noodles in my Albertson’s grocery store with the rest of the tofu in the produce area.  I don’t know how good they would taste with tomato sauce and meatballs, but they work extremely well in this Japanese soup.

Below are the vegetables I included in the soup along with the noodles.  Just use whatever veggies you have in the house – the real star of this soup is the broth.  And the broth is simply water with hon-dashi soup stock added. Follow the instructions on the hon-dashi box for how much to use per cup of water, taste the broth yourself, and then if you’re like me, add a little extra.  🙂  And if you have any seafood around the house (I didn’t), throw that in too for additional protein and healthy fats and oils!

Simple Tuna Lunch

This is a great quick lunch, and satisfying too.  Just mix together everything but the tomato and baby spinach, season with a little salt/pepper/garlic powder/onion powder if you want to, and then put everything together in a bowl or on a plate!  My avocado was really ripe, so I mashed it up and mixed it in with the tuna, but if yours is more firm, you can chop it and serve it on top with the tomato.

PS: Halved green grapes are extra delicious in place of or in addition the celery, if you have them!  I wish I did!  🙂

PPS: I just realized that I’ve been spelling avocado wrong.  Crap!  Forgive me?  🙂