I have food on my mind!

Today is one of my days off of work, and I'm proud that I woke up at 7:30 so I can get some things accomplished! Today, I'm giving everyone in "blog world" my opinion of two new foods that I tried today.

#1: Bear Creek Cheddar Broccoli Soup Mix
My Rating: Decent!

This soup mix comes in powder form, and is about $3 from Walmart, and about $5 from other grocery stores that I've seen it at. I was very skeptical about this powered soup mix, but willing to try it. It is the most simple soup I have made. You bring water to a rolling boil, whisk in the soup mix, and voila! Since I live by myself and the package makes half a gallon of soup, I cut it in half. I used half the amount of water, and separated the soup mix into two equal parts and used one of them. I am a lover of broccoli, and when I saw the green "flakes" of broccoli in the soup mix, I was somewhat disappointed, but that is an easy fix! I cooked a cup or two of frozen broccoli in the microwave for a minute, then chopped it up into little pieces, and added it towards the end. I also added some black pepper. It's very tasty soup to eat with saltine crackers. This Broccoli Cheese soup was not the best I have ever had, but it is very hard to live up to the big caldron's of broccoli cheese soup that we eat at family gatherings. I did feel better about eating it, knowing that it is less than 200 calories per serving, and I didn't pour loads of half & half or a big brick of processed Velveeta cheese into it. My overall rating is "decent"....not the best, but certainly not the worst, and it took 10 minutes to make!


#2: Homemade Fruit Smoothie
My Rating: Extraordinary!

I found this idea on a website, tried it, and LOVED it! It's simple. Take low-fat vanilla yogurt, and pour it into an ice cube tray. Pop it in the freezer for a couple hours. In the meantime, slice some fruit.....Bananas, mango, pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, kiwi, ANY kind! Or, to make it much easier, do like I did and buy frozen sliced fruit. I got frozen strawberries and raspberries. Once all the fruit and yogurt is frozen, get out some zip-lock bags. Place 3 or 4 cubes of yogurt and about one cup of whichever fruit you prefer into each bag, until all the fruit and yogurt is gone. Now you have "ready to grab" bags of smoothie ingredients. Place the contents of one zip-lock bag into a blender, along with about half a cup of juice or milk (I used Cran-apple juice). Blend it until everything is smooth (Warning!!!: I started out only using 1/4 cup of juice, and my blender just laughed at me, and didn't mix anything up. If you add 1/2 cup of juice, it should work, but if it doesn't then add just a little more juice). The sweetness of the yogurt, juice, and berries is plenty....no extra sugar needed. The smoothie I created today was delicious, and my rating for this recipe is EXTRAORDINARY! Each smoothie pack makes about 10 oz - 12 oz, and is less than 150 calories. Can't beat that!