I love all kinds of soup, but French Onion is my absolute favorite. If ever I am at a restaurant and it's on the menu, I have to order it. The first time I had a bowl of French Onion Soup, I was 19 years old. I had just married into a family of excellent cooks and was being forced to break outside of my little box and eat things I had never eaten before. Hartman (my husband) came from a family that ate whatever was on the table whether you liked it or not and they didn't waist food. Luckily for them, pretty much everything that was made was delicious. I came from a house where my mother was an excellent cook and I liked most of the things she made, but she never made me eat if I didn't want to. My stomach was small or something because I somehow survived on very little food for the first 20 years of my life.
I do remember my dad trying to make me eat some sort of goo-lash once by forcing to me to sit at the table until it was gone. He found me at about 10pm asleep in my chair with my head next to my plate...untouched. Everybody kind of gave up on me after that and decided that I would eat when I needed it, but my in-laws would not let me off quite as easy. For the first 2 years of our marriage we lived about 10 minutes from them and we ate at their house every Sunday. It was eat or starve, so I decided to eat and to my surprise I liked a lot of it. Especially the soups and my father in law makes the best soup! What I would give for a bowl of it right now. mmmm
So - I love good soup, and I really love that I just came across THIS article about how soup can help you loose weight and stay healthy! You probably already knew that but the article goes into a little more detail. It has actually motivated to make a big pot of homemade soup each week for the rest of the winter. I'm going to start with some of my old time favorites and explore some new one's too! I'll share the recipes with you and we can see together if eating a bowl of soup every day can kill some fat! We'll probably have to steer clear of the really creamy one's for now. We can eat those when we're skinny :)
I'm going to post the weight loss section of the article for an easy read, but if you want to know all the benefits check out the entire article by clicking on the link in the paragraph above:
Lose weight with soup
Obesity is on the rise throughout the industrialized world, resulting in a startling increase in the rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. You can count yourself out of the statistics if you eat a bowl of soup at least once a day. Nutritious low-salt soups will nourish you as they flush excess wastes from your body. It has been found that people who eat one serving of soup per day lose more weight than those who eat the same amount of calories, but don’t eat soup. Homemade soup is your best bet, because canned soups tend to be loaded with salt and chemicals. My advice is to use organic vegetables whenever possible. The herbicides and pesticides that can be present in conventional produce can assault the immune system and overload it with toxins.
Here is the first of my Favorites! FRENCH ONION SOUP from Rachel Ray ( I changed it a little):
INGREDIENTS:
One 5-ounce bag seasoned croutons (about 2 cups) or sliced baguette bread
1/2 cup dry red wine
Two 14.5-ounce cans beef broth
2 large sweet onions, thinly sliced
4 thick slices Swiss cheese
DIRECTIONS:
In a deep skillet, heat 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat.
Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent and
softened, about 15 minutes. Add the wine and bring to a boil. Pour in the
beef broth,lower the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes; season with
pepper.
Preheat the broiler. Divide the soup among 4 ovenproof bowls, then top each
with one-quarter of the croutons and a slice of cheese. Set the bowls on a
rimmed baking sheet and broil until the cheese is bubbly and golden, about
1 minute.
