In perusing my food porn over at Pinterest, I was shocked to see I had only nine pictures of soup. How is that possible, given I eat soup about twice a week? Fortunately, I have a slew of photos, recipes, and videos in my archive just waiting to be shared. I’ll therefore be taking time in the coming weeks to tantalize your taste buds with a few of my favorites. Think: Mexican vegetable, roasted cauliflower, Moroccan red lentil, wild mushroom, and many more.
Aside from the many creative ways to prepare soup and the fantastic health benefits—here’s the skinny on soup—I just really love it, whatever the weather. And what’s the common denominator for all my recipes? Why, homemade vegetable stock, of course. It’s the starting point for all my soups and is simple to make. It’s also a great way to put veggie scraps to good use and limit your food waste and packaging. Cheaper, too. (More on all that here.)
Here’s the how-to.
Cooking Note. I forgot to add bay leaves to this batch, which I did in my short video intro to stock here. No worries, though. Whereas you want to include the basics in each stock—onion, carrots, celery, peppercorns, and a slew of water—the herbs and other veggies you add can vary. It’s really not an exact thing.
Thanks for watching! I look forward to sharing more soup recipes and videos with you very soon.
Dr. P. K. Newby is a nutrition scientist and educator with expertise in the prevention of obesity and chronic diseases through diet and the relations between agriculture, food production, and public health. She is currently training for the Boston Marathon, her third (more here, and here). She brings together her passions for food, cooking, science, and sustainability through her writing and videos to help people eat their way towards better health, one delectable bite at a time. If you like what you see here at The Nutrition Doctor is In the Kitchen, please subscribe to my blog from the home page, become a fan on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, check out my food porn on Pinterest, watch my cooking videos on YouTube, and peruse my recipe page for soups, salads, seafood, sweets, and more.
Remember that it’s always about options when it comes to 
I honestly couldn’t tell you which I preferred. If I had to choose I’d probably say the original. There are a lot of big flavors already so adding nuts and cheese did become a little distracting, as I speculated, and it just wasn’t necessary, especially when served with soup. Nuts and cheese add calories, which is another good reason to watch your intakes if you’re trying to lose or maintain weight. Yes, they can still be consumed as part of a healthy diet—particularly nuts—but I’ll admit there was a time I put cheese on almost every salad I made (that is to say, just about every day). This is a bad habit I’ve since broken. It’s better to focus your salads around healthier plant foods, obviously: it should not be a cheese delivery vehicle. And make sure to use lots of greens, too, which add fiber, water, nutrients, and texture to balance the starchier squash and sweet cranberries. It’s hard to see the hefty bed of lettuce in the plated salad pictures, but there actually is a lot of it there, and it makes a difference.
