budget meals - cleansing vege soup

Now this soup isn't for everyone, but as with most things in life it can be tweaked to suit. I'm using this soup as a bit of a cleanse after a week of eating a lot of junk. As a stay at home mum my lunch varies from left over rice cracker with vegemite to a scone and a coffee at the local shops. Very rarely is it yummy or healthy. I had been doing quite well with my walking too but due to bad weather last week it was put on hold.

So this morning straight after school drop off Amelie and I took the pram out for a walk to the local shops to buy our week's supply of fruit and veges. I took the long way round for maximum distance and to include a bit of a hill in an otherwise flat walk. I've been using the RunKeeper app on my phone which tracks your route via GPS and keeps a record of your walks. I'm finding this quite handy and a bit of a motivational tool. It also posts results to your Facebook page if you let it.... another super motivator!

So here is my cleansing vege soup. You can adjust this to be a family meal by adding bacon, pasta, barley, beans or more starchy veges like potato.

Finely slice 1 leek, 1 clove of garlic and one large onion and sweat them off in a large stock pot.

Once they have worked up a bit of a sweat add your other sliced veges - I used half a bunch of celery, 2 carrots, 1/4 of a cabbage, half a small cauliflower, 2 handfuls of baby spinach and 6 or so small mushrooms. I cooked them all for a minute or two before adding a litre of chicken stock and a litre of water.

Cook it all on a med- high heat for an hour or so. I then blended it all up using my stick mixer. I like this sort of 'plain' vege soup to be blended with just a hint of texture. Now have a taste and add some salt and pepper. I also added lashings of cumin and some cayenne pepper. The hit of flavour from these spices is awesome for this soup.

I've just had a bowl of this and it is pretty tasty, especially with the kick from the cumin and cayenne. The rest is going in my fridge to be reheated for my lunch throughout the week. Yay! It's cheap, healthy and hopefully will keep my eating on track this week.