Cooking in our new house!

Well I am officially a resident of the Oak Cliff area in Dallas. I worked all last week and loved it. I am working with an adult literacy program in Arlington as the Student Director. I think I am really going to learn a lot and love it. My family came to town this weekend bringing furniture and organizing our tiny apartment. I looks really great now, thanks to all the Welch's. Tonight I went grocery shopping and have planned out my meals for the week. Working for Americorps I will live on a really tight budget. Because of this I am going to be really mindful about the food I buy and eat.
Tonight Catlin and I made a big pot of soup to eat at different times this week. It is a recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook. This is a vegetarian cookbook that is my absolute favorite. All the recipes use tons of fresh vegtables and other interesting combinations. The author also hand wrote and illustrated the entire cookbook. Love it!

The recipe was really simple. I change a few things however to take the Weight Watcher point value down.

• Two medium tomatoes
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil (I changed it from 2 table spoons)
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 3 medium cloves of garlic
• 2 stalks celery
• 2 cups diced sweet potato
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. paprika
• 1 tsp. tumeric (i didn't have any, and it still tasted fine)
• 1 tsp. basil
• dash of cinnamon and cayenne
• 3 cups water
• 1 medium bell pepper
• 1 1/2 cups cooked chick peas

Catlin chopped up all the veggies except the tomato, bell pepper, and chick peas and added them to a pot with the olive oil over medium high heat.

After letting the onion get soft (about ten minutes) The water and spices were added. This was left to simmer for 15 minutes. After that the remaining vegtables were added. It is done whenever they are soft enough for you! The spices can be tweaked and the vegtables can be substitued.
The weight watcher value for 1 serving (out of 6) was 7. I tweaked a few amounts and got it down to 3 points per serving. Pretty good. It was filling too.

Next time I will try to update with pictures of the apartment!

Rebekah