Tom Yum Thai soup (Vegetarian)

If you have a cold or a sore throat, this soup will help your throat. Tom yum is a soothing soup with lemongrass, ginger and veggies.

Ingredients:

Low sodium vegetable stock

1 whole carrot chopped (rounds)

½ cup chopped button mushroom

¼ cup chopped onion lengthwise

2 twigs of fresh lemongrass cut into 1 ½ inch pieces

4/5 large ginger pieces cut

½ tomato chopped lengthwise

Spring (green)onions chopped to garnish

Cilantro chopped to garnish

Salt to taste

½ tsp soy sauce (low sodium)

½ tsp rice vinegar

Juice of 1 whole lemon

2/3 lemon leaves

Boil the vegetable stock and add the chopped onion, carrots, mushroom, lemongrass and lemon leaves with ginger and continue boiling. Add soy sauce, rice vinegar and salt as per taste. Add lemon juice little at a time and taste before adding everything.

After boiling, turn off heat and sere hot. Before serving, garnish with chopped green onions and cilantro.

Veggie bean soup

The main struggle for most Moms is to feed the right kind of food to their kids. If you tell them they have a soup with lots of veggies and lentils, I am pretty sure most of them would refuse to touch it. This is a yummy recipe of black beans, pinto beans or garbanzo beans whichever you prefer or all three combined with juicy veggies.

To start off, heat some olive oil in a soup pot or crock pot and add a bay leaf or two with a long cinnamon stick with lots of chopped garlic to it. As it gives out the aroma, add some finely chopped white/yellow onion to it. Make cubes of raw potato and add them to the onion and garlic combo.

As you sauté these, you want to start adding cubes of carrot, celery ,mushrooms to it. Add some yellow roasted corn to it too. As everything in here is raw, you will want to cook everything for a long time. For this reason, a crock pot is a better option. Add a whole can of low sodium chicken/vegetable broth to the mixture and let it simmer.

Go ahead and add the cans of beans as per your taste. I loved black beans with garbanzo combination. To create that rich creamy taste and flavor, try to use home-cooked dried beans as they are less metallic tasting and mushy than canned beans. It is a little effort, but worth the taste.

Lastly, add some pepper and salt according to your taste and let it simmer. Serve it hot with strands of cilantro as garnish.