Soup diet!

Haha no, I haven’t been dieting for the wedding at all. I wish I were!!

We (read: me) do a lot of cooking here, pretty much every weekday dinner, saving a night out for the weekends or when friends visit. I loove cooking, and I spend HOURS at the grocery shop or farmer’s market staring at the different veggies and meat. Sydney has such an abundance of fresh produce, I wish I had a better repertoire to use them!

Because he comes home (unpredictably) late, it is easier to make soup which can be re-heated when he returns. Plus, I just have to chop things up and dump everything into a pot.

And the best things about soup is that it is SOOO tasty AND HEALTHY!! (gosh, I sound like those spastic television ads). You can’t really go wrong with soup, because it’s just all this natural flavours from the fresh produce, and you can make all sorts of combinations for surprising tastes. It is so healthy because I don’t have to use a single drop of oil (we have barely used our 500ml bottle of vegetable oil!) and I usually remove the skin and use only lean meat.

So here’s something really simple, that looks like it just came out of a Chinese restaurant. Heh!

Looks pretty decent eh?

Lotus Pork Ribs Soup

500g Chinese Pork Ribs
Small section of lotus roots, sliced
2 sweet corns, halved
2 carrots, sliced or cubed
Small section of radish, cubed
4-5 shiitake mushrooms
1 tbsp wolfberries (for bright eyes!)
500ml chicken stock (I use Campbell’s)
3 cups of water

Other veggies you can use: Swedes, parsnips, celery (eech).

1. Boil the pork ribs once to ‘flush out’ the fatty goopey things.
2. Throw in everything and boil for a couple of hours.
3. Serve!