Cleanse your Dirty Little Self
Every once in a while I do this three day cleanse. Every once in a while meaning… after a weekend full of drinking and pigging out on the worst foods because of those darn drunchies! This cleanse isn’t your normal suja juice cleanse. Thankfully you get to actually, but it is the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days. Breakfast is a grapefruit, ginger, apple smoothie, lunch is an arugula, beet salad, and the dinner part of the cleanse is this soup. Ugh, this soup…Honestly, it is my favorite part of the whole cleanse. I‘ve actually made this soup outside of doing the cleanse, it’s that yummy. You feel full after it, but you know that it’s healthy, and you don’t feel gross after eating it because it’s so refreshing. I know what you’re thinking… “soup? refreshing?” I’ll explain in a bit, but another great part about this soup is that it’s easy to make and hard to mess up. I am by no means a good chef, so this is a big bonus to me.
To make the soup you start with onions, oil, and turmeric and you cook the onions down till they are transparent. Tumeric is supposed to be one of those “super foods” and helps your digestive system and help with inflammation. It has become super trendy, and you know your girl loves trendy. I will warn you though… Turmeric stains! I accidentally got some of the soup on a dish towel about a year or two ago and still have not been able to get that bright yellow spot out of my white dish towel… and yes I have tried using bleach. If you have any recommendations on how to get the stain out, please help a girl out and comment below.
Anyways, back to making the soup… So, then you add water and carrots. After that all cooks for a while you add cut up green beans and let that all cook for about 15 minutes. Then here comes the wild part. Are you ready? You take about a cup of spinach and put it at the bottom of your bowl and then you take dill and put some of that in the bowl as well. I personally put a shit ton of dill in there because I love the taste, but you can do you. Then you put the hot soup over the greens and then place a plate over the bowl (I know weird right?) for five minutes. When you remove the plate the spinach is soft and wilted and all of the flavor from the dill has been soaked into the soup. Ugh, the dill guys! But you aren’t done yet. Next, you take a lemon and squeeze lemon juice on top. Sounds crazy, I know, but I honestly put a ton of lemon in my bowl. It makes the soup taste so refreshing! I usually go back for seconds and thirds, but like it’s so good for you! It has spinach, which is like the best type of green because it has so many nutrients in it, and you have other veggies like onions and carrots and green beans. On top of all of that healthy stuff, you even have a superfood in there, turmeric. It’s also pretty wild how filling it is. I feel like healthy stuff never really fills me up, but this soup really does the trick! It’s the perfect meal when you are trying to eat healthy in the winter because I always crave something warm and filling when it’s cold out, like pasta and mac and cheese and pizza. This soup is super filling and warm but you don’t feel super gross after you eat it like after eating a bowl of fettuccine alfredo. So I recommend making this soup, eating as much as you want till you’re full, and then if you still want that mac and cheese, then go for it, hun. Treat yourself.
Being healthy overall is just really important. If this soup isn’t your jam, I get it, but there are other things to do besides doing a juice cleanse or eat the same meals for three days. You don’t need to go on some crazy diet, cleanse, or detox to be healthy. I interviewed one of my good friends that I have known since high school, Ivan, about his weight loss journey. He recently started trying to make healthier choices, which sadly means no more Raising Caines fried chicken for him. Honestly though, he’s been sticking to being healthier and I am proud of him. Listen to his experience and some tips he has down below.
