Super Easy and Super Nutritious!
Homemade Canned Tomatoes, Ham, and Cowpeas
During The Winter After Canning Season Is Done
I can beans and leftovers on Sunday. Just one day a week I processed food for the weekly meals and this saves me hours of time and makes for a stress free dinner time when I am too tired to cook.
Celery and carrots are about ready to turn limp. A perfect ingredient to soup since you don't need crisp veggies like in salad. I always save all my vegetable leftovers that are about to turn bad for soups!
Peel and chop several large carrots into bite size pieces. Chopping them small enough to combine with other flavors in the dish.
Smash your garlic with the flat of your knife. This helps you peel the skin of the garlic and releases chemicals that will enhance the flavor of your garlic and increase chemical compounds that improve your immune system functions. Let the smashed bulbs sit for 15 minutes before processing.
Dice celery into thin slivers that are easy to eat and combine with other foods in the soup. I cut away the top of the celery and leave some leaves to chop with the stalk. Celery leaf has more flavors than the stalk. Set aside
Pour canned tomatoes into blender and add garlic, blend until garlic is incorporated into the tomatoes.
I like to saute my veggies using lard which can stand high heat without becoming toxic. Add a teaspoon of salt and pepper to your liking. Olive oil and other vegetable oils get a little chemically twisted when frying foods. The body can't process these kinds of fat when they are cooked at high heat. Coconut oil can stand high heat as well and we need saturated fats for our electrical system and cell health. I bet you didn't know this but without fats we will die! Our ancestors knew this but we seemed to have forgotten fats are not bad!
Add your canned cowpeas, canned or cooked meat, don't drain the liquid before adding. This will be the liquid plus the tomato sauce for the body of your soup. If you want a thinner soup stock add a cup of water or any kind of vegetable or meat stock. Add your tomatoes and garlic mixture. Add your favorite spices, I like to add a little spicy curry seasoning with dried basil. Heat to a simmer and serve. The garlic taste better when cooked lightly and it's more nutritious.
One cup of Cowpeas will give you almost 100% of your daily does of Thiamin and even bigger dose of Folate. Folate is part of the B vitamin group and if we eat an abundance of natural foods it is very easy to get sufficient amounts for healthy body functions. This vitamin is common in all food sources except manufactured foods. Processing and refining foods increases storage life but destroy most of the nutrients a body needs for proper functions. The government has mandated flour and other processed foods add Folate to their products because most American's consume processed foods rather than whole foods. Thiamin is another essential b vitamin for the body and one cup of cowpeas give the body 95% of it's daily requirements. Without these 2 essential b vitamins humans experience a host of nutritional deficiencies that manifest as modern life style diseases. Check out the links I provided to the Linus Pauling Institute.
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