The ideal soup. In the words of my father, probably my biggest food critic besides myself. The man that thinks everything I make needs more gluten. The guy that when I try to get him on board with our sugar cleanse, goes out and buys a box of halloween candy and claims he thought sugar cleanse meant MORE sugar.
If he loved this soup, i’m pretty sure everyone will. Best part, it uses a whole chicken which in my opinions is the easiest most economical way to eat chicken. A whole free range chicken feeds a crowd and you get the bones to make stock later. By far the easiest way to cook a whole chicken is to make a big soup.
There’s no risk of it not being cooked or worse, being dry and overcooked. The only downside is you don’t get that crispy skin, but I personally looooove the fat that the skin imparts in the soup. It’s so rich, and although the coconut milk isn’t a traditional addition, it adds a creamy comfort to my version of sopa de pollo like none other.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
Woohoo, getting ready for week 1 of the Whole 30 Challenge! If you want to jump on board you can still join the October 30 day detox challenge Facebook group right here. Week 1 is usually wrought with challenges. For a lot of us, were not used to cooking this much, or being so careful about our ingredients. As our bodies start to process the fact that were not going to give them that quick sugar fix there can sometimes be an inner rebellion.
Your mind will tell you that this whole thing is bogus and won’t do you any good. It’s lying. Being prepared makes the work a lot easier. Having delicious nourishing recipes to turn to makes cooking FUN.
So keep in mind if your doing this solo, most of these recipes serve 4. No biggie, just cut them in half and have plenty of leftovers.
In the next few days I’ll be posting some Whole 30 Essentials so stay tuned.
*As for this weeks shopping list: You aren’t going to use ALL these ingredients in the first week. Some will carry you through to the end. Remember the meal plan is for feeding more than one person so scale down accordingly.*
*Spices, nuts and seeds can be bought in bulk*
Shopping List
Meat/Poultry/Eggs
2 lb ground pork
addictive free chorizo sausage
1 package nitrate free bacon
2 lb ground beef
1 lb ground bison
2 lb ground turkey
1 1/2 lb boneless chicken breast or thigh
3 dozen free range eggs
Seafood
4 filets Tilapia
smoked salmon
can sustainable fished BPA free tuna (I like the raincoast brand)
Vanilla beans are a magical magical thing. They blow my mind. Every little seed bursting with the most common yet rare and precious flavour in existence. Vanilla is an ethereal looking orchid, truly stunning. It adds something so special to anything it touches and brings out the hidden characteristics in the foods it mingles with.
If you can’t tell, I’m pretty fucking gung ho about vanilla.
I just got back from my brothers wedding where I had the pleasure of making THE cake. What foods represent the true characteristics of star crossed lovers and real deal twin flames?
Chocolat et vanille of course.
Cacao and vanilla grow in the same jungles, one is masculine, rooted, robust, dark, hard shelled yet amazingly soft inside. While the other is light, ephemeral, delicate and grows upward towards the heavens. The two were ordained the perfect match long before modern society had any idea of their existence. It only made sense to encapsulate their majesty into their luxurious wedding cake. I’ll post the recipe on the blog soon of the cake which was a double fudge chocolate quinoa cake with vanilla bean, rose and honey cashew cream icing.
For now, I’ll ramble on a little more about vanilla…
And macadamia nuts because mmmmmmmm…
Whenever I go on vacation I crave fudge. Which likely stems from childhood trips to Banff where we would always visit the fudge factory and stock up for our trip back home. And if you know me at all, you know that when a craving lurks, it cannot simply be ignored. But most fudge is way too sweet so of course the simple solution is to make it yourself.
Vanilla Bean Macadamia Nut Fudge is my new obsession, and you only need a tiny bit to satisfy even the maddest sweet tooth. It’s loaded with healthy fat from coconut and adorned with another tropical favourite, macadamia nuts.
I’ll tell you a secret. The other night I watched game of thrones for hours and ate nearly two cups of mac nuts. Talk about a binge. I can’t even have them around or I just go mental and day dream about Jon Snow while noshing my life away. So, if you got em, use em!
These are so lip smacking simple and a zillion times better than those neon coloured chemical bombs filled with who knows what. I used to love those crack pops, arrrrrgh like my life depended on them. But this of Coconut Orange Creamsicles is waaaaaaaay better and ultimately super easy to make. Especially if you have one of these handy dandy zoku popsicle makers which give you perfectly frozen pops in mere minutes. Yes such a thing exists. Yes they are a bitch to get out of the moulds. But when yo baby is screaming his face off because he’s getting four new molars all at the same time, they are a godsend, and momma muscles kick into full swing.
I kid you not, my child at two and half of these all in one go and he was SO stupendously happy. And since they have barely any sweetener, just a touch of maple syrup, and are packed with healthy fats from coconut milk and vitamin sunshine from oranges, momma was stoked. No more waiting hours for popsicle heaven to unfold. No more teething death screams. Just pure popsicle bliss ahhhh.
I made these after work one day. I got home dying of heat and starving for a combination of comfort food and healthy raw veggies. My foray into the new Asian market that just opened up didn’t last long as my son took to throwing his first public temper tantrum (milestones!). But I did manage to sneak out with some rice noodles and a jar of tamarind. I didn’t plan on posting this recipe, but the end result was so beautiful and vibrant and it just oozed with the taste of summer times bounty so I had to share it. The beauty of these Summer Harvest Noodle Bowls is that you can just use whatever fruits and veggies are in season. Every bite is different and the fruitiness of the fresh strawberries goes amazingly well with the umami Thai inspired sunshine sauce.
For the month of August I’m doing this 30 day writing challenge with Andrea Balt and Tyler Greg Knotson called Write Yourself Alive. It’s super fun and engaging so far, the whole community is so supportive and encouraging. I thought I would share some of my writing on here too, just for kicks.
Write a letter to the person you thought you would be by now and explain why you’re better off where you are…
Hey you wild souled creature, hungry for adventure, thirsty for knowledge, lusting for true love and hungry for a different kind of life. I love you so much. Because you are a part of me, a part that I often revert to, dying to escape the mundane and run with the wolves. We’ve been on quite the journey. Just when you were planning your next escape to Africa, where you would’ve studied dance and eaten with your hands on dirt floors whatever was offered, an unthinkable thing happened. A choice erupted, you faced the stark reality that now you could be responsible for another being. Either that or you could prod through jungles, jump off cliffs, eat fried crickets and make love in the street.
That furious drive to go all places, to be wild and completely free will always be with you. Your heart yearns to understand the poor men pulling rickshaws without shoes on, why entire tribes worship a stalk of magical corn and how those with the simplest of lives often seem the most fulfilled.
You never fit in, you weren’t willing to give your life over to debt and the 9-5. You fought that confinement with all your might. With an unsavoury and selfish might at times. In your quest to be this nomadic gypsy queen, you realized something. In trying so hard to always be on the move, you were getting lost. Fear of settling, fear of stillness, a mind so fraught with questions and concern. Go go go, more more more. At times when stillness did come, you found a smothered sadness and a gaping unfillable hole. Maybe at first you tried to fill it with what you thought was love. You pretended for awhile that someone else could light your fire. But it didn’t go away, it lingered until stillness showed itself and that old familiar feeling crept up. Did it matter if you were in Thailand or Australia? No. You got quiet, you started to get to know yourself a little better, to sit with it, to find solace that you weren’t the only one with holes. One day it just clicked. An earth shattering understanding that you my dear, could only find what you were looking for within yourself.
That selflessness that you so admired in others, in the mamas lifting rocks to build castles for false kings just to feed their babies, the kind stranger on the train offering food and shelter only to find that he himself barely has such things. Your heart broke open deeper each time you witnessed these acts requiring no payment in return. And then you were given a choice. To give life, to nourish another, to give over your body, your space, your quiet, your freedom- to care for another.
It’s not like you didn’t have options. No one would’ve shamed you had you made the choice to keep your freedom. You didn’t have to do it. Its not like you had any money or even a spare bedroom in your tent. But you had courage, you had love enough to give and you chose. You chose selflessness, you chose undying unhindered boundless love, you chose to overcome obstacles. Now you see that your freedom doesn’t dwell on aircrafts and cheap hostels, it is within you. You’ve really surprised yourself. Did you know you would be a good mother? Never in a million years did you see yourself here. And hell, your no typical mom either.
Being present to marvel at the amazing discoveries of this new being. Learning how to be a mom is a lot like travelling. You don’t know what to expect. You can read every book and blog on the topic and you still won’t know much. We learn through the richness of experience and motherhood is no different.
Here you are little girl, a woman now, a mother, a lover, a giver, with no regrets and weepy eyes that over flow every time you think about the moment you met that wrinkly little star seed for the first time. You relive it over and over again, so that no matter what happens you never forget. I can’t say that for any waterfalls or meals eaten with my hands on dirt floors. I can say that motherhood has made me better than the person I thought I would be by now.
I have a quinoa salad for every season. But summer is my favourite, when there’s so much abundance all you really need is a simple dressing and whatever local vegetables you have on hand.
In my car I only have the radio, I wish this wasn’t the case but #firstworldproblem. Anyhow, I don’t normally listen to top 40 and I never even had it on the radio until moving back to the city recently. It’s weird, popular music isn’t necessarily any good for the most part but it is fucking catchy.
One song that I can’t get out of my head, and I don’t even know what it’s called is, I can’t feel my face when I’m with you, but I love it, but I love it.
What does this mean? Does anyone know? I love singing it, and its one top 40 song that doesn’t immediately make me switch the station, but I really don’t get it.
Maybe I just need to crank it, nosh some of this super summer quinoa salad and let my imagination dream of numb faced star crossed lovers whacking each other without sensation.
My friend Amanda says I’m 3 years behind on everything to do with pop culture. This is pretty accurate. I didn’t know who Nicki Minaj was until like, a week ago. I like her new song too, even though it probably isn’t all that new and is rather sexist, it’s catchy as hell.
Another pop culture phenomenon I didn’t know about was Game of Thrones. Dear God. I am so glad I never knew about this show until now. There is no way I would be able to have survived the pending mystery of whether or not Theon really killed Bram and his brother in Season 2. I know you guys are way beyond that now since it’s onto Season 6 but still, I would have died not being able to watch the very next episode right away.
One thing I am up on is this whole Cecil the lion thing. Okay, it’s absurd that people still kill animals for fun. Any animal. There’s a similar situation in BC where our premier is allowing permits to be doled out for up to 500 grizzly bears to be hunted per year. It’s the insanity of our culture at its best. In the midst of public outcry though, some very important points have been brought to light. My favourite being that if people cared half as much about GMO’s and bills being passed making Monsanto nearly unstoppable in their quest to not tell us what we’re eating, we’d have a lot more control over our food system. Or the fact that 90% of the animals we eat every single day are raised in inhumane, unnatural conditions. It’s speciesism at its finest, is it not?
What other poppy happenings have I missed?
What I do miss the most is living near a clean pristine river and swimming in the lake on a whim. City life is a huge adjustment, but I’m trying to embrace it. The benefits of pad thai at the drop of a hat and amazing markets are pretty sweet. But hey, who knows what’s next.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
