Weekly Recipe | Southwestern Vegetable Soup

No Sugar No Flour is a weekly series where I share a new recipe that I’ve tried and enjoyed.  The only parameters are that it cannot contain added sugar or flour.  Take the challenge and …Enjoy!

I mentioned last week that my all-time favorite cookbook is Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  I have owned that book for at least four years and I still find new recipes to try, like this week’s No Sugar No Flour recipe – Southwestern Vegetable Soup.  It’s a hearty vegetable soup, but the peppers and tomatillos are a nice flavorful twist on a predictable winter dish.

Recipe Notes –

• Definitely use the dried chipotle chili – the flavor would be lacking without it.
• Try swapping a sweet potato for the regular potato called for in the recipe – highly recommend it.
• I did not add a jalapeno pepper and didn’t really miss it.  If you really like some heat, then certainly add it, but a little sriracha always does the trick in our house.

As always, let me know if you try this recipe or any of the other No Sugar No Flour recipes.

Weekly Recipe | Black Bean Chipotle Soup

No Sugar No Flour is a weekly series where I share a new recipe that I’ve tried and enjoyed.  The only parameters are that it cannot contain added sugar or flour.  Take the challenge and …Enjoy!

My in-laws gave me the “Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special” cookbook for Christmas this year and I can tell already that it is going to move to the top of the stack, right up there with Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian“.  Moosewood Restaurant focuses on natural foods with a vegetarian emphasis.  It is located in Ithaca, New York and is owned by the nineteen members of the Moosewood Collective, some of whom actually staff and operate the restaurant!  They see themselves as “part of an important movement toward cultivating more healthful diets based on the creative use of the freshest high-quality ingredients and natural whole foods.”  Now, that is something to get behind!

As you’ve probably already guessed, this week’s recipe is from Moosewood Restaurant and it is their Black Bean Chipotle Soup. Delicious!

We followed it pretty much to a tee. I would highly recommend using the dried chipotle pepper rather than the canned because if I can find them at a Cincinnati Kroger, so too can you.  We served it with sour cream and cilantro as recommended, and that was it.  A one-dish meal and it was plenty for us, even making enough leftovers for both of our lunches.  Who needs tortillas (full of flour) when you have a Mexican soup this flavorful?

Buen apetito!

A Weekly No Sugar No Flour Recipe

Remember the no sugar no flour challenge I started this past summer?  You probably assumed that by now the challenge had run its course and I am back to eating pasta, pizza and dessert.  Well, I’m happy to report that the challenge has turned into a lifestyle! I follow the guidelines about 85% of the time, maintaining my weight without being obsessive.   But whenever I mention my dietary guidelines in conversation, the most common response is, “So without sugar or flour, what do you eat?”, to which I always answer “Plenty!” And that’s answering as an lacto-ovo pescatarian!  In all honesty though, when I cut out sugar and flour, I found that my appetite was much more consistent and I don’t need as much to feel full.

To prove that you can still eat well without two very popular ingredients, I’m going to start a weekly series to share a no sugar, no flour recipe that I have tried and enjoyed myself. I’m not planning to turn this into a food blog – I’m no gourmet chef and taking pictures of food is not my forte.  So the focus will be on providing ideas for dishes (should you want to adopt this “lifestyle”) and motivating me to expand my own recipe repertoire and try new things.

Why not start off with a bang and share with you the full meal that Phil and I prepared for our monthly dinner party of 6? We tried all new recipes – major risk I know, but luckily they all turned out really well.  And yes, I know that bread has flour in it and yes, I may have had a piece (homemade by my husband – I could not refuse), but 1 out of 5 is pretty good if you ask me.  Click any of the images for the full recipe and give a no sugar, no flour dish a try!

No-knead Bread* by Mark Bittman
(served with assorted cheeses selected by Whole Foods)

Image via

Rainbow Chopped Salad by bon appetit

Winter Minstrone by Moosewood Restaurant

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Roasted Harvest Vegetables with Quinoa by a couple cooks

Brussel Sprouts by Philip
(recipe created on the fly!)

Bon appetite!

*This recipe contains flour.

A Week in the Life

When I first decided to give up flour and sugar I thought, “what will be left?”.  Well surprisingly, quite a bit!

The biggest adjustment has been the flour more than the sugar, and specifically granola, bread and pizza.  No more granola with almond milk and fruit for breakfast, no more toast with your eggs, no more PB&J when you’re in a rush, and no more pizza.  These have been tough.  The other things I’ve had to give up have not been so bad: I was never one to make pasta that often or do a lot of baking (remember I just moved from the swamp where you use your oven maybe 3 months out of the year).   But the biggest adjustment so far has been learning to feel comfortable with not being completely full.  I was used to eating until I couldn’t eat anymore and now I finish most meals feeling that I could definitely eat more, I just choose not to.

I am not going to lie though and say that the first week without sugar or flour was easy because it was not!  I was cranky because I was hungry, I was frustrated because I didn’t know what to eat, and I felt fatigued without any sugar “highs”.  But somewhere around day 4 or 5 I started to adjust and my energy level started to even out.  Instead of highs and lows throughout the day, I had a more steady stream of energy.  Now, I have not become the energizer bunny, but I am not reaching a point in each day where I feel that I must take a nap or grab some caffeine for fear of not making it.

What does a week of eating without sugar and flour look like?  It looks like this:

This is my food journal the Week One of the challenge

I am averaging a pound a week in weight loss, with which I am completely ok.  I think the slower it comes off the more likely I will be to maintain it.  My goals moving forward are to increase exercise and cut back on snacking.  I’m using my snacks as a crutch right now to get me from meal to meal and I think I might be over-doing it a bit.  I am learning a lot and will continue to make tweaks to my routine to improve how I’m feeling.

What do you think?  Could you give up flour and sugar for a week or two to see if you notice a difference?

No Sugar, No Flour Challenge

I have been frustrated for awhile now with the way my clothes have been fitting.  It’s probably due to a combination of things – sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day, the gradual slowing of my metabolism, and all that delicious food in New Orleans.  But it wasn’t until I stepped on the scale a couple of weeks ago that I realized just how much my body has changed these last few years.  I was shocked and disappointed.  Clearly my diet and activity level aren’t cutting it anymore and it is time to change something.

I started doing some research on changes I could make in my diet to help me shed a few of these extra pounds.  I already feel like I do many things right – I drink more than 8 glasses of water a day, eat 3-5 fruits and vegetables a day, and because I don’t eat meat, I consume a fair amount of beans and whole grains.  So what was left?  My mother-in-law has been following Dr. Gott’s “No Sugar, No Flour Diet” for quite some time now and with great success I might add.  I would actually say that she has adopted it as a lifestyle, which is, I think, what Dr. Gott intended – make it to your goal weight and use a philosophy of balance moving forward.  His guidelines are basic – don’t consume anything with added sugar or flour of any kind – if it has the word flour in the ingredient list, don’t eat it.  Removing these two ingredients from a diet removes most of the empty calories we consume and forces you to fill that with vegetables, fruit and other more filling foods.  It sounded like a good plan and so I designed a challenge for myself.

The Challenge:

• Take off 12 pounds (this originally started as “stick to it for 2 weeks” but now that I’m 1 week in, I think I can last for longer than that)
• Cut out all added sugar and flour from my diet
• Add green tea to my daily routine
• Run 3-4 times a week

The Tools:

• An accountability partner: My sister has agreed to take this challenge with me.  Having come from the same gene pool, we’re experiencing similar changes in our bodies.  So who better to understand the road ahead?
• A Food Diary: We have started a shared google doc where we update what we eat and how we feel in columns that allow us to compare and see what the other is eating.  I know that I better stick to the rules because Kelsey will be seeing everything (and I can’t lie).
• A scale: I purchased my first scale, the one that gave me the shock a couple weeks ago, to track my progress.  I’ve never owned a scale before.  I always believed that you should just know your body well enough to not need one, but clearly I was fooling myself.  I weigh myself each morning and record it in the food log.
• A guilty pleasure: We are allowing ourselves 1 square of dark chocolate (88% cacao or higher) as needed to help ease us down off of the sugar addiction.

I’m looking forward to the challenge and will be back to post more about what I’m eating and how I’m feeling.  I know that these simple carbohydrates are an addiction that I will have to break like any other.  I hope that even if losing the weight isn’t easy, that I will feel healthier and have more energy that will drive me to continue with the challenge for as long as it takes.

Have you ever tried giving up sugar & flour or any other healthy-eating challenge that worked for you?  If you’ve ever considered giving up sugar, here’s an inspiring article that really motivated my sister and me to take this on in the first place:  http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/how-cutting-out-refined-sugar-changed-one-womans-life.