Are you looking for a red soup to serve for the holidays? If you like to color-coordinate your holiday menu, I have the soup for you! We had this one last night and it was so good. We are in the midst of another self-quarantine so I have lots of time to try new recipes. We will do the same thing we did for Thanksgiving. We're having my sister and her husband over for Christmas Eve and then the kids/grandkids will come over on Christmas. In the meantime, the presents continue to pile up under the tree.
This soup recipe is from Hannah Freese, RD. I'm now done with her 12-week program so will continue in the alumni group who meet once/month via zoom to keep on track. I lost 8 pounds and hope to keep going. Most people in the group lose 1-2 pounds/per week so my weight loss was pretty minimal but I'm thrilled with losing weight instead of gaining weight which is usually the case during this time of year. Aside from losing weight, tho, I noticed bigger changes by following her eating plan. Namely, my joints aren't as achy. After last weekend when the kids/grandkids came over and we made Christmas cookies and gingerbread, my knees immediately got achy. This week, I got back on the Freese diet and it went completely away. For me, I think it's the sugar intake. It's not really that bad omitting sugar because Hannah's plan includes dark chocolate which seems to satisfy my sugar urge. There is very little sugar in the dark chocolate over 70% cocoa and the darker you go, the less and less the sugar intake. I currently eat the 85% cocoa. Her 12-week plan is a progression of developing healthy eating strategies so the changes are all gradual. Her diet does not feel restrictive compared to other diets I've followed which is why I plan to just keep doing it. Two of my sisters also did her 12-week plan and lost 16 and 17 pounds. And both are keeping it up, as am I. Her diet is really just basic healthy eating but she provides so many delicious recipes and daily meal plans that make it super easy. In the alumni group, we'll still get monthly menus and recipes to keep us on track. I went off of it a lot during the 12-weeks which is why I didn't lose as much as others did but we were around the grandkids a lot, not to mention Halloween (remember my Halloween and cheese pairing plate!), then Thanksgiving, then it was Christmas cookie-time, fruitcake, and almond roca. How did I even lose any weight at all?!! I mean, really? And I just love all my Christmas cookie recipes.
And Bruce continues to make almond roca, his family's tradition. We give most of it away but there is always ample around here for us, too. It's very addictive...
And then my sister always sends us fruitcake that was my mom's recipe.
This really brings back Christmas memories for me and I just love this fruitcake. I look forward to it every year. AND I STILL LOST WEIGHT - it's a Christmas miracle! I figure that I can do the diet most the time and still enjoy special occasions. My main take-away after doing the 12-week plan is that you don't have to completely change your lifestyle to succeed. I am a RD just like Hannah and I believe in her same philosophy of eating healthy. Hannah is up on the latest science, on behavior modification techniques and she is extremely good at explaining concepts in simple terms that lay people understand. I highly recommend her to anyone who wants to improve their health and not necessarily just for weight loss. There was one woman in the group who was trying to lower her anxiety. She said that she succeeded in meeting her goal. I could have said I wanted to decrease my arthritis pain because it worked for that, too, which I'm just as happy about as the weight loss.
One thing that Hannah uses a lot in her recipes are raw cashews as a method of getting a "creamy" texture that is also in a lot of vegan recipes. I keep raw cashews on hand now so I'll have them for her recipes, plus they are good to munch on. I also had some leftover stewed tomatoes in the fridge to use up. This recipe calls for fresh tomatoes which would be good in the summer but you can certainly used canned as I did. I also happened to have made some homemade broth which was nice and fresh so all these things made this soup a perfect dish for dinner last night. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Makes 4 servings
1/4 cup raw cashews
2 tomatoes, cut in half or 1 cup canned tomatoes
2 large or 3 small red bell peppers, halved and seeded
1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled
3 tsp. olive oil
3/4 cup dry red lentils, uncooked
2-1/3 cups water
2-1/3 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. oregano
1. Place cashews in small bowl, cover with water, let sit while you prepare other ingredients.
2. Preheat oven to 425 F. and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Toss the tomatoes, red pepper, onion and whole garlic cloves in olive oil and place on the baking sheet. Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, add lentil and water to a stockpot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes or until tender. Stir in broth, salt, pepper, and oregano in with the lentils and mix well. (This is where I added the canned tomatoes if not using fresh.)
4. Remove vegetables form oven. Let cook slightly.
5. Place vegetable in pot with lentils.
6. Add cashews to pot. Using an immersion blender, blend soup into a uniform consistency. Or, alternatively, blend soup in blender in batches.
7. Ladle into bowls. Drizzle with a splash of olive oil and red chili flakes.
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