Brrrr!  We are back to that beautiful time of year when the colours are amazing but the cooler temperatures are a hard fact of life over the next few coming months.

What is one to do? 

Being a nutritionist, my thoughts often go right to food!  Well, one option is to enjoy warm and hearty soups more often.

Homemade soup is a simple and healthy and warm way to get a good amount of veggies and other whole foods into your day.

A soup can be simple, and amazing, just by sautéing onions, and garlic, maybe even some ginger.  Add any veggies you have - carrots, celery, spinach, cabbage, etc.  Lastly, some water, chicken stock, or coconut milk.  Voila!  Recipes can really help to take out the guess work and ensure a successful result if you are like me and don’t enjoy dabbling with ingredients and would rather use a tried and true step by step recipe.

Something I feel comfortable with doing, outside of a well used recipe, is adding amazing plant protein sources to recipes.  Using a protein based addition, such as red lentils or quinoa, is a great way to add in more plant based goodness.

First, lentils, and I’ll just refer to the red ones here for now.  Lentils are a mighty nutritionally dense food.  Packing a large amount of folate, fibre, and many other nutrients, knowing that just 1 cup of cooked contains 18 grams of protein is incredible.

Quinoa can also be a great additional ingredient that can be easily added to soups and warm fall or winter foods.  Quinoa contains about 10 grams of protein along with about 7 grams of fibre in 1 cup when cooked.

Note that either quinoa or red lentils can be easily added to any canned or pre-made soup as well, if you want to take a soup to a more meal type of option in your day.

Enjoy your warm and healthy soups!

Have a great week.
Lisa.