It doesn’t matter how hard you work in the gym, if you don’t control what you put on your plate. Unfortunately, I’ve been off track on my workout routine for quite sometime. And with Spring already making its way, its hard to resist wearing the crop tops and midi skirt – now isn’t that an irony.
So when the excitement of Spring-coming takes away your sanity and you incessantly start accumulating clothes that’s not right for your body shape, what do you do? Start with the basics – clean eating.
Those days when you’ve been super busy and don’t get enough time to workout and you’re stressed, and you just need to eat something that tastes good at the same time that’ll keep you away from putting on all those extra kilos? That’s what this Avocado rice and avocado soup is about – delicious and super healthy. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of healthy food, while salads have been my favourite {since forever} I tried experimenting healthy cooked meal and bang I ended up with this interesting soup and rice.
Let’s call it goodness in a bowl {that’ll allow me to wear the crop top, despite not being working out}.
Avocado Soup
Ingredients
- Butter (very little quantity to sautee)
- 1/2 table spoon olive oil
- 4 leaves of Lettuce
- 1 avocado
- Vegetable stock (I used one raw banana, 8 beans beans, 1/4 bottle gourd, 2 tomatoes, 2 celery sticks for preparing the stock)
- Lemon juice
- Parsley (use some to be blended with the soup and set aside for garnishing on the top)
- 20 pine nuts (toasted dry and crushed)
- Salt and black pepper as per taste
- Grated coconut
Instructions
- Heat the butter and oil in a saucepan, and add the lettuce. Cook for a few minutes until the lettuce is just beginning to caramelize on the edges.
- Add avocado, vegetable stock, lemon juice, parsley and pine nuts, and bring to a gentle simmer. Mash the avocado in the pan.
- After about five minutes, remove from the heat and use an immersion blender to blend the soup until smooth. Make sure there are not any lumps remaining. Season to taste, and return to the heat if necessary.
- Serve topped with parsley and grated coconut.
While my sister loved it as is, I thought it tasted a little bland, so I added this special home made spice made from over 16 spices including whole dry red chillies, dried mango powder, coriander seeds, turmeric powder (haldi), black salt , cumin seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, asafoetida. It gave the soup an interesting flavour, you can find your own thing if you feel the need to add something.
For the rice, I used the same vegetable stock from the soup as the base but added fresh cubed avocado, parsley, more beans (little sauteed) and mixed it together with cooked red rice. Topped it with fresh lemon juice.
While I am not about following a certain trend, or a rigid archetype, but after seeing the rounds crop tops have been making everywhere fashion, I have been literally standing on a foot to get hold of one and wearing it, and crop top brings back a hell lot of memories from my teenage days. I used to sneak out wearing a (really) cropped top {yes in days when wearing even a non-sleeved shirt would scandalise people} paired with a skirt strolling down every part of the town. Ahhh those days. So obviously now that they’re {crop tops} back on the fashion radar I had to have one. But times have changed and I am not my skinny self at this point in my life.
Nevertheless I made my best effort to make sure nothing but only the right food enters my stomach. And One month of clean eating and a little bit of workout has helped me to muster the courage to clad myself in my spring buys {the crop top and midi skirt). Pulling out the pieces all I could think was, “Will I fit in those? I hope I don’t look fat in it.” While I was not too pleased with how I looked (there are so many problem areas), it didn’t look as bad in the picture and the angle my photographer used for the picture made it blog-worthy. BTW I ordered that yellow midi skirt from Asos and was pleasantly surprised by their free delivery to India this time around.
