Wednesday, January 4, 2012

General Talk - Soup Home-Made vs Store Bought

Hello all you wonderful gluten free blog readers out there. Remember if you like my blogs and use the Stumble! feature to hit that thumbs up button!

I know it's been a while since I was here but remember this is a long term blog and holidays are not a time I can sit here to write but now the holidays are over and I'm back to doing the daily life.

I thought this was the perfect place to start with the weather the way it is. I don't know how it is in the USA any more but if what we have here in Belgium and what memories I have left of the old fashioned 'canned soups' thing going on when I was there last, I thought this was a good subject to talk about.

I took a trip the store last night and man was the weather pure crap. High winds (gusts to 70mph) and the rain with it made it 100x's worse because that stuff HURTS! So, safe inside the store's walls, I find myself searching for inspiration for making soup. This of course started with a trip through the aisle that has the pre-made soups. My god, what is our world doing to us?? All the canned soups have so much crap in them to preserve that it's not funny not to mention the chances of gluten contamination is just way too hight. So the next stop was looking at the pre-made 'boxed' soups. These are boxes of soup that are not condensed, ready to just pour into a pot, warm and eat. Ok sounds great but if you step back for a moment and really think about what that means. How do they make it last for so long on the store shelves?? Preservatives! And you better believe LOTS of them! If you pick up a package such as soup and it has more then just every day ingredients like broth of one sort or another, flour or other thickening agents, veggies or possibly fruit (for some of those rare ones), then it's NOT worth buying! Not to mention again that the chances that the soup you buy might have gluten some how.

A recent story that falls in this that I need to share. I was delighted to find a soup that included small meatballs that I've become fond of out here but can't have 99% now because they all have gluten based products to bind them. Ok so great, I re-read the ingredients and warnings like 10x's by now and almost squeal with excitement. I bought a 3pack (HUGE mistake on my part... NEVER buy in bulk until you know for SURE things are ok). I got home with my goodie and the first thing that I did when I could was pure a box into a pot, heat it and eat it! I was in heaven until about 2hrs later that I noticed 'crap, I'm burping this flavour and my stomach is still feeling full/bloated). This for me is a sure sign that there IS gluten in something. In fact one of the key signs that it has gluten for me is that I burp the flavour of what ever it is that had it. *sigh* Shit, another contamination and to a product that doesn't even warn of it.

So my husband, being that it's a Belgian company, wrote them for me and asked about gluten contamination in this soup and the reply from the company roughly translated that they made all their soups on the same line with the none-gluten based ones at the beginning of the week and the others later in the week, wash down and the week starts over. Ok.... like IDIOTS! That is 'made in a factory that process gluten based products'! I should of seen if I could do something about forcing them into putting a warning on their products of gluten since they process chicken soup with pasta and other soups with pasta in them which include gluten sources. Anyhow, since then I have given up 100% on buying or even looking at 'pre-made' soups and go to making my own. I discomfort *I* personally get when I get into gluten is not worth it not to mention again having my hopes of something 'new' getting burned.

Ok with that brief little story out of the way, I went and finally decided on a cream zuchinni soup... it involves *4* items... zuchinni, Alpro light soja cream, chicken broth cubes and water... yep that's it. I calculated that with the expense of adding the expensive light soya cream (at about 1.50euro a block and I needed 2 for this recipe) that I made a 5quart soup pot last night for about 7euro. The zuchinni, of which I bought 6 mediumish sized, cost me about 3.50euro, the 2 blocks of cream coming in at another 3euro and add a tiny bit more for the 4 chicken broth cubes and the water I used (which is always on stock at my house!). The prices for *1* quart of 'pre-made boxed soup' when it came to any kind of creams or cheese being added to the base of it cost in the range of 3.50euro. Even the non-cheese type ones such as tomato in this kind of soup cost a minimum of 2.50. I mean come on, how hard is it to make tomato soup?? Even my zuchinni soup could be made for half the cost if you can buy light cream that isn't soja based. I know the USA has a lot more 'low fat' or 'fat free' items that we don't have access to yet here in Belgium.

So think about it.... make soup 10x's cheaper at home that involves a bit more patiences of about 20mins to be honest to chop some veggies or even now a days you can find fresh cut veggies for you already for this purpose so exclude the chopping process and let them boil oh and like 2mins to puree the mixture in some cases or buy this salt and preservative loaded box of what I'd like to now refer to as crap.

Soups can be made so easily and so quickly, why waste your time even looking at the soup aisle? Go to your fresh veggie aisle instead and let your imagination run! Wild mushroom soup, cream zuchinni soup, fresh tomato soup, veggie soup, cream mushroom soup with wild rice for a heartier soup, chicken with gluten free vermicelli pasta and loaded with fresh veggies, shrimp bisque for something quick but extravagant. The thoughts are endless. I'll be posting my next recipe on a wonderful potato garlic soup that I make that is not only good for you but can be low fat on top of it all!

No comments:

Post a Comment