Feel Good Monday Post: Connecting With Your Kale!

Happy Monday All,

I hope you are enjoying this chilly winter weather and finding ways to stay warm!
Today I made a surprisingly delicious spontaneous white bean roasted fennel soup.
I say surprisingly because I was worried that it would be too bland.  Luckily,
the roasted fennel and garlic made the soup quite flavorful. I added a little red pepper flakes at the end to give it a little kick as well.  I will am going to post the recipe although I need to warn you I did this from the "soup artist" within and didn't write anything down as I went along.

I have something EXCITING to share with you all today. It is a video that my friend FrancoVogt took and his wonderful wife Lucia Reale Vogt helped produce.  I have been wanting to do food demo clips for a while now but I am easily intimidated by technology and happen to be camera shy as well.  All that being said, Franco and Lucia made this process painless and FUN.  I am deeply grateful to them for making this happen as I have no idea when I would have gotten this together myself.  I also am quite impressed with the results and hope that you will be as well! A thank you to Inanna King  for working her magic with my face and hair and giving me my most polished appearance.

I need to say before you watch it, I make a mistake about kale.  There are at least 3 different kinds of kale, not two.  I forgot to mention Russian kale, which has different shaped leaves than the lacinato or curly kale. It has purple stems and is quite tender. It makes a delicious kale salad.  Sorry Russian Kale, I didn't mean to leave you behind!

A dear friend of mine saw this video and suggested calling it "Connecting with Your Kale".  I love this concept and hope that you give the salad a try and make it one of your staples on your menu.  You can also do the same prep for the kale and use a balsamic dressing, add parmesan cheese, currants and toasted pignoli. There are endless ways to make kale salad but the Rainbow (demonstrated) and the Tuscan (with balsamic, parm, currants and pignoli nuts) are among my favorites.  Click on the link below to see my debut video appearance!

http://vimeo.com/58307332

Before I say goodbye for this week, I would like you to pick ONE thing to do to take yourself.  For example, I will keep focused on drinking plenty of water. My body keeps telling me to drink more, dry skin, dry mouth, both remind me to DRINK!  What can you do to nourish yourself this week?

Lastly, if you enjoy the video, PLEASE SHARE IT WITH OTHERS!

Take good care,
Lysa

White Bean & Roasted Fennel Soup
 1 lb dried white beans ( I used cannellini)
1 bulb of fennel
1 red onion
2 stalks of celery
3 cloves garlic
2 pinches of dried thyme
1 pinch of dill (optional)
2 pinches of basil
5 cups water or broth
sea salt to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Soak beans overnight and skip to step two OR cover beans with water by 2 inches in a pot and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, drain and rinse beans in colander.  Let sit.

2. In large soup pot, saute' diced red onion and celery until soft and slightly browned.  Add herbs and stir.  Add beans, water or broth (chicken or veggie) and let cook.

3. In oven, roast chopped fennel and garlic cloves at 350 until tender.  

4. When beans are soft, add fennel and garlic, salt, pepper and some more of the herbs if you choose.  Let cook together for about 10 minutes or so.  Turn heat off, take immersion blender and blend beans and fennel.  Depending on how you like your soup you can either blend some or all of the soup.  For extra flavor, add a pinch of red pepper flakes and grated parmesan cheese.  This soup will accompany the kale salad demoed in the video beautifully.  Also, the recipe for the kale salad can be found on my website www.bodyandsoulnutrition.com under the recipes link.

Enjoy!