SPRINGBOARDING

Before I explain what I’m doing with this recipe, I want to offer it and have you keep in mind
two things:

1. This recipe came to me by way of PSYCHNURSE, (Thank you!) who uses it quite a bit, and
2. It is extremely versatile, and that’s just ONE of its virtues!

To make the soup:

Use about 6 to 9 cups of water, heat to a rolling boil, then add 2 to 3 boullion cubes, or flavor of
your choice. Now add:

1 TBSP of chopped green onion
1 TBSP of chopped parsley
2 CUPS of fresh spinach
1 to 2 CUPS of chopped or shredded cabbage
1 grated carrot
2 to 3 stalks of chopped celery
1 CUP of fresh mushrooms
½ can of sliced or chopped black olives
2 TSP of garlic powder
1 TSP of onion powder
½ TSP of curry powder
3/4 CUP of lentils
3/4 CUP of brown rice.

(She says that sometimes she adds other ingredients, like zucchini, swiss chard, etc, depending on what’s available.) Now. Turn the soup mixture down to low for ½ hour, then to simmer for an hour. Salt and pepper to taste. Sometimes she puts a little soy sauce in it, too.

Do you see the versatility? All those vegetables!

So when I tried to make this soup, I ventured forth without all of the ingredients, so I used this recipe as a template of what I was trying to accomplish. I kept all the seasonings. But instead of using exactly the vegetables she prescribed, I chose to add chopped green onion, a can of spinach (and I paid for it with less flavor and maybe less nutritional value!), a can of sliced mushrooms (again, I paid for this decision), a full of can of black olives, which I did not slice or cut up, and the pulp I had left over from juicing carrots, celery and fresh spinach (what a difference, taste-wise, the FRESH spinach added!) In my juicer. I substituted a can of pinto beans for the lentils (I rather liked the taste, although the lentils would have added a great taste of their own), and, since I didn’t have any brown rice—or any rice at all for that matter—I broke up spaghetti with my hands to make small pieces that would hang around in the soup. I also substituted a large can of chicken broth for the water and boullion cubes. The result? It was quite good, actually! Some day I’ll actually follow the recipe!

Everybody who cooks knows what I just did, even if they don’t have a name for it. I substituted, using the standard recipe as a guide. Graham Kerr actually had a name for this. He called it “springboarding”. He continually demonstrated this technique on his cooking shows when, for example, he was looking for a healthy substitute for oxtail soup, which usually runs over 1,000 calories a bowl, and he was able to springboard from that recipe to healthier ingredients and create a soup which came in at around 300 calories a bowl. (I plan to talk a lot about Graham Kerr here. To me, he was the only cooking show celebrity who consistently showed viewers how to make healthy meals. Most of the other stuff out there now is, as I said before, food porn, with only a few notable exceptions.) The value of springboarding is very important to people who juice fruits and vegetables. I want to enlist your help in identifying substitutions we can make where pulp or juice from a juicer can be used in a standard recipe. At the very least, there ought to be a myriad of ways to use a juice to create ingredients for soups, and I want to discover as many of them as I can.

So won’t you join me in this quest, and in the next exciting episode of—

THE JUICED AVENGER?