chicken soup for the soul

This soup should be made on the same day as roasting a chicken. When you eat it is up to you - you can eat it the next night - a Monday - or freeze it and eat it another time. But it's soooo good.

country chicken soup
(serves 2)

300g roasted chicken, shredded (ideally leftover from a roast)

1 large leek, sliced
1 large carrot, diced
1 large stalk of celery, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil

750 ml chicken stock (ideally made from the chicken)
100 g dried soup mixture (peas, lentils, etc), cooked per instructions
1 large red pepper, chopped
1 large courgette, chopped
200 g mushrooms, sliced
100 g spinach leaves
salt and pepper
lemon juice
basil and sour cream (to garnish)

Heat the oil in a large pot. Sautee the celery, carrots and leek for about five minutes. Then add the hot stock little by little. Add the courgette, peppers and mushrooms and bring to an almost-boil, before reducing to a simmer for about 25 minutes. Then pour in the drained country soup mixture, the spinach leaves and the lemon juice. Season well.

If serving immediately, top with basil leaves and sour cream. Otherwise, freeze it as is, and slowly bring to a boil.

Calories: less than 350 for half. A great deal. And boys like it too, if "we can have this again" is anything to go by.

summer roast

I don't generally like cooking proper Sunday lunches in summer. Perhaps it just feels wrong to cook such warm, boot-filling fare when it's supposed to be warm outside.

Nonetheless, my husband continues to request roasts, particularly roast chicken. Cooking chicken feels virtuous - it often makes for several meals and I've managed to perfect the art of not needing any added fat to get a good, crispy bird.

Therefore I relented yesterday and purchased a lovely free-range chicken to roast with lemon, basil and rosemary. But choosing the side dishes wasn't as easy - carrots, mash and gravy just felt wrong.

Given that it's August, garden tomatoes went on the table, dressed simply with white wine vinegar, fresh basil, and salt. Add a little yellow to those lovely rich reds in the form of sweetcorn (from the can, though cobs would have been lovely.) Finally, freshly boiled runner beans completed the traffic light trio of veggies on the table.

Oh, and because no roast is complete without potatoes (to my husband, anyway) a few steamed baby new potatoes finished off the plate.

compare and contrast

Have a look at Sunday’s dinner: roast chicken, steamed kale, swede and chive mash, and boiled turnips. But have a look at portions (mine versus my husband’s).

My plate is healthy, with a focus on portion control. It's under 400 calories. His is stuffed to the brim. But he can handle it.


This is key to establishing a house with healthy eating, when one person is watching calories and the other isn’t. Fill your refrigerators and your plates with healthy food, but let those who don’t need to watch their size eat a bit more. Then everyone’s happy!

a lunch of leftovers

Lunchtime yesterday was great - roasted chicken breast with tabbouleh. Why such a fancy lunch, some might ask, used to me flogging my spinach and butter bean salad every day?

Well, actually, this 'fancy' lunch was actually as easy as it gets, because it was entirely from leftovers - roasted chicken from Sunday lunch and then leftover tabbouleh from dinner the night before (which I didn't mention on the blog, but it was grilled mackerel with cumin and lemon served with tabbouleh and green beans, one of my favourites).

Making lunch that morning was certainly easy enough -combining the contents of two Tupperware dishes from the refrigerator into one and dropping it in my lunch bag with a couple pieces of fruit.

A few weeks ago, while on a training course, I headed into Pret a Manger for lunch and picked up one of their salads - Chicken Tabbouleh and Yogurt Dressing Salad, which the company's website describes as "chicken breast in a light yoghurt dressing, tabbouleh (Israeli cous cous, broad beans, chick peas, red peppers, flat leaf parsley), red peppers....finished with French dressing." I have to admit, it was quite nice, especially for a store-bought salad, and I didn't even need the French dressing. The salad, minus the dressing, was 189 calories, say Pret. But it was also expensive, setting me back £4, which is a lot for a takeaway, especially one that's not particularly big.

The brilliance of leftovers is that they're so easy to make, and if you plan ahead, you can "build in" leftovers to your cooking. When I was making the tabbouleh the night before, I knew that a 50g serving per person of bulgar wheat was plenty, but I threw in an extra serving; this way, if my husband wanted a bit more, he could have it, and if he didn't, I knew exactly where it would be going - my lunch box the next morning.

Tabbouleh is extremely tasty on its own for a lunchtime salad as well, and creative cooks - tabbouleh purists may consider them heretics - can add feta cheese or olives too. I like it with feta cheese sometimes, but actually, it's not necessary.

Tabbouleh

(serves 2)

100 g bulgar wheat

3 medium size ripe tomatoes, chopped and deseeded

150 g cucumber, diced and deseeded

A small handful of mint, chopped

A package of parsley, chopped

Juice of 1 large lemon

Salt and pepper

Cumin, to taste

Prepare the bulgar wheat as per the instructions, allowing it to cool. In a separate bowl, combine the tomatoes, cucumber, salt, pepper, lemon juice and cumin. Mix together.

Add the bulgar wheat (when cooled), mint and parsley, mixing to distribute evenly.

Taste and add more seasoning if necessary. The mixture should be very parsley-heavy.

Serve immediately, or for added flavour, allow the juices to soak into the bulgar wheat for a few hours in the refrigerator. Either way, it's great.

One serving: around 200 calories.

I am actually already thinking about the next time I will make tabbouleh. But for now, since it's my lunch break, it's back to my old friend the spinach and butter bean salad...