Food: the soup of the week

I don't usually cook soup every week. It just happened that now I did. I cooked five soups in five consecutive weeks... They are almost vegan, I don't eat meat, I do occasionally eat some fish, eggs and cheese. Here they are:

1. Smoked trout chowder. I have a happy memory from a skiing vacation about a corn chowder with truffle oil and micro greens. I liked it so much I went and had it tree days in a row. Then, I had a smoked fish chowder at a local brewery, that may or may not have had corn. Anyway, I combined the two. On a sauteed base of onion carrot and celery I added one can of smoked trout in oil, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Then I added water and few cubed potatoes and frozen corn and let it boil. When done I added a little cream, and that's it... I cooked this just before the coronavirus situation really exploded. I may have intuitively needed this comfort soup.

2. Cabbage soup. I make often the traditional eastern European cabbage soup. That is a base of sauteed onion carrots, parsnip, celery, salt, pepper, shredded cabbage, water thyme (very important)  and crushed tomatoes (fresh or canned) with a smoked meat bone, that I skip because I don't eat meat for few years now. But to improve the nutritional content I add sometimes garbanzo beans or some kind of grains. Now I added buckwheat, that I just discovered and I find I like it added to meals and not so much on its own (it has a quite strong taste somehow feels metallic to me). I also added turmeric (at the beginning with the sauteed vegetables, and half of pickled hot pepper for some bite. Again this is a comfort food for me as I had it from childhood cooked by mom and grandma. I also came across cabbage soup as a "diet" food, it must be because it is very filing for the few calories it has...

3. Red lentil soup. This is both a comfort food and a memory... a skating memory. In the good old days when I was skating I used to skate on Mondays a session on my own, at noon, then have a lesson at 3. During that break I either ran errands or had lunch. Almost invariable the lunch was at a Turkish restaurant that is close by the rink and open on Mondays, and has a lunch menu... I often have their red lentil soup (a little spicy and minty). I made it on a base sauteed onion carrots and celery, salt, pepper, turmeric, red pepper flakes, then I added water, red lentils and tomato paste.  And... it was the first time I added prunes. The recipe caught my eye on facebook, and I just happened to have prunes in the house and they were to dried up to eat on their own. I have to say it they added something "warm" to the soup. The traditional Turkish recipe has some barley to thicken it and, at least at the restaurant, was blended a little.

4. Cauliflower soup. I love cauliflower and I've just happened to find a beautiful one in store. I usually cook cauliflower in different kinds of stews (like mediteranean with celery, peppers, olives or capers, or moorish with curry spice and raisins). But now I wanted soup. Staying home all the time, I realized how convenient was to be able to grab a bowl of soup when I wanted something quick and light to eat (instead of grabbing some junk food). I started the cauliflower soup with sauteed onion. carrots, celery, red pepper, salt, pepper, turmeric, water, cauliflower, half of pickled hot pepper, red pepper spread (sometimes I put tomatoes but as I had the pepper spread on hand I thought is gonna be a nice change and keep the color of the soup lighter). I usually add potato to the cauliflower, but  I wanted something a little more filling and I added cannellini (white) beans, hoping they wouldn't compete in taste with the cauliflower and I was happy with the choice.

5. White bean soup. This is my favorite soup! but as my grandma was making it, I cannot ever get even close to that, but guess what, neither is my mom. I'm wondering if maybe is more about the happy childhood memories, then the actual soup. Anyway, I was talking to my mom about this, and she said "of course you loved grandma soup, she added tarragon!". The "of course" was in regard with the very well known fact that tarragon is my favorite herb. This soup I make from dry white, cannellini beans. I don't use white beans often, the previous week I used a can that I bought when stocking up the pantry for the quarantine. These white dry beans I had were a little old I think, I had them in the pantry for a while, I really use them just for this soup. Either that, or I didn't cook them enough, so they were a little hard in the soup. The base was sauteed onion, carrots, parsnip and celery to which I added the beans that I cooked for half hour before separately, with the liquid, and close to the end I added tomato paste and tarragon. "Of course" I loved the soup with the tarragon, but I don't really associated it with my grandma soup, sight... My grandma usually used a smoked bone, so that may be the difference, but she surely made it without meat at points. It's gonna be a forever mystery!

That's were my soup streak ended, the next "light" cooked meal of the week was a zucchini stew.

Monthly skating review: progress and goals adjustment

At this point we know the lockdown will continue probably for the whole month of April. And truthfully, skating is less and less in my mind, other thoughts are taking over. But I still feel that part of what I do is related to skating, or habits I've got while skating. I also feel that the desire to go back to skating makes me more aware and willing to keep up with exercising and eating well.

But let me tell you about last month. 
The first week was a regular skating week. I was working towards making my skating training more process oriented then goal oriented. And I talked about that idea here and how I started to implement it here.
The second week of last month I described here.
The third week of March (quarantine week 1)
This week I was self quarantining under the city guidelines to stay home if you can.  At first I was sad to see all the entertainment gone, concerts, ballet, restaurants and, of course skating. Then, I accepted it and started to organize. The first days, I was busy and productive. I cleaned the  house,  and only got out to do some quick shopping for non perishable food, and keep the appointment for spay/neuter. The news weren't terrible just yet. The weather was rainy all week long and in the week-end it snowed, so staying in was not so bad.
Regarding skating, I missed it soo much, it really hurted. I had a dream where I was skating, very vivid and intense... I did a double axel! I can still feel the flight and the rotation. It felt so real, I was sure if I would have had ice right then, I would have been able to replicate it. (I remind you that in real life, my jumping ability stops at the waltz jump....) But that is what dreams are good for! Back on the reality side of life, my coach sent to all his students some guidelines on how to keep the skating skills alive (practice turns on the floor in front of the mirror, concentrating on alignment and practice the dances as steps on music). Of course I knew I have to keep my body strength. I'm part on a skating group on facebook and many members were sharing their work out plans. For me doesn't work that well to start big, but start small and build on it. I was doing lately some core work. I taught let's add squats, and push ups.
The fourth week of March (quarantine week 2)
This was the first week of mandatory quarantine. The news from Europe were terrible, the news here, confusing. I didn't really need to get out of the house for anything. Because I was in the house more, I have found that I had to clean more, I found myself cooking more, and the days were blending and bleeding into each other. At some point I felt I'm suffocating. It was sunny few days in a row so I went for a walk. It was pleasant, but frustrating too somehow. I saw some people running and I realized how much I missed cardio activity (that I was getting from skating). The exercises I do in the house are just strength and stretching. As I was wondering if I could maybe use this opportunity to start running (which I don't like), the weather got gloomy again, so no running for now. I was looking into ballet, there are so many free classes on the internet. It's not working too well for me because I don't have a big enough space near the computer to do all they are doing and I get frustrated. To be honest, my heart is also not so light and happy to enjoy ballet. And so, I found myself thinking about yoga. I started small and simple: breathing, cat cow, mountain, forward bent and flat back, down dog, lunges, stretches. When doing yoga in a studio I loved the flow classes, where you were moving from one pose to the next. I don't have enough knowledge myself to do that on my own. I tried many dvds in the past and none was the rhythm and poses that I wanted. So I'm thinking for now to keep in simple, study these simple poses and create a habit, then build on that.
Skating... I somehow didn't miss it so much. I try to not think about it, there is nothing I can do anyhow...
The last days of March (quarantine week 3)  
Well, here, I've got lost. This was the moment when it became obvious that the quarantine won't stop on April 7th as it was planned at first. I went to sleep late for few nights, so the I felt tired during the days and I was "comfort" eating. During the first days of quarantine I came across articles (one was about an astronaut in space) advising how to hold yourself together while in isolation. The advice was to keep a schedule (especially sleeping and eating and exercise, that I generally do anyhow) and also schedule pleasant activities.  But it seemed that the harder I tried to basically do the things that I was doing the weeks before, the worse I was in fact doing. My body was restless (from not enough sleep, and I'm wondering if there is such a thing as exercise withdrawal because I move significantly less then while skating), my mind was unfocused, and my heart and soul couldn't really find the pleasant activities. This is when I came across an article saying something opposite, or at least complementary. It was that, times are really hard, don't put extra pressure on yourself, go trough them as painless as you can. This helped a lot, combined with the fact that at that point my sleep was on schedule again. From there, I reassessed the eating. I tried to pay attention and eat when I was hungry and eat a whole meal. The previous days it felt that I was snacking all the time and a little hungry all the time, but not hungry enough for a meal (vicious circle there). It was interesting to look back and see that I was very satisfied eating "the soup of the week". I might write a post about those... Also, I found out that my confort food is: fries. Exercise slid away from me for few days, but I came back, without any effort, to the quick and easy things I was doing before, because they do make me feel better. I hope I can build up to more, but I don't want to put any pressure on myself.
Skating seems very very far away.

Goals? Just do it! That is... crawl trough it...