Dairy free tomato soup! YUMMY!

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Yesterday I made a tomato soup. I read different recipes and came up with my own. The final product was delicious. A definite thumbs up!

Ingredients:

10 vine ripe tomatoes cut in quarters

5-7 garlic cloves

EVOO

1-1.5 tsp cumin

1tsp coriander

salt

pepper

basil

oregano

1 Cup chicken or vegetable stalk

cayenne pepper (optional for a little kick)

goat cheese (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450

Dice tomatoes into quarters and put them in a baking dish. Cover the tomatoes with EVOO and add plenty of salt, pepper, oregano, and basil. I would say add enough salt not TOO much, but do not be afraid to add the pepper, oregano, and basil.

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In the dish place 5-7 garlic cloves. They will get nice and soft as they cook in the oven and will add great flavor to your soup.

Place the tomatoes and garlic in the oven for 35 minutes. As they cook you will notice juices emerging from the tomatoes and a wonderful smell will fill in the air! Mix the tomatoes twice. Once after 15 minutes and again after 25 minutes.

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After the tomatoes are cooked, carefully take the dish out of the oven as the tomatoes will now be sitting in a lot of tomatoes juices.

Heat a large pot (one that you would make a soup in) and add EVOO or vegetable oil, crushed garlic, cumin, coriander, and a little cayenne pepper if you want a kick.  I would add about 1/2 tsp-1tsp of each, less for the cayenne. Feel free to add more of the seasonings and make sure there is enough oil so that the seasonings do not get stuck to the bottom of the pot. Do not let the garlic burn. Put the fire on medium to low heat. You want it to sizzle for about 3-5 minutes. Keep mixing.

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Add the tomatoes and all of their juices to the pot of seasonings and mix for a minute.

Add 1 cup of chicken or vegetable stock. Mix everything and simmer on low for about 3 minutes.

Take the tomato mixture off the heat and let it sit and cool down. After about 10 minutes  blend everything. You can puree if you have an immersion blender. Or you can pour it in your blender like I did! Works great.

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I made the soup with a grill cheese sandwich on the side. YUM. For my camera man I added a tsp of crumbled goat cheese, in his bowl, to give it a little more creaminess. Camera man said he LIKED the tomato soup!!!! This could be one of the very few dishes he has given positive feed back on. WOW.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Starving for a photo shoot

I recently had a photo shoot with Eric Levin, from Elevin Studios. The photos are for a composite card, which is like a portfolio/business card combo. This will be a really useful tool for me as I am trying to get into fitness modeling and/or commercial modeling. When I say fitness modeling I do not mean that my goal is to do muscle posing on the cover of Oxygen, I mean I want to display exercises in a spread in SHAPE magazine!

After my shoot someone asked me if I went on "some crazy diet" before the shoot.  Legit question. I can totally understand wanting to look your best for photos that will be in the public eye, but here is my answer… NO!  This was my second photo shoot, the first being with Lucie Wicker Photography, and before that one I DID restrict my food intake more. After that experience, I told myself I would not do it again for the following reasons:

1. I hate restrictions! I like to eat what my body needs.

2. I was so grumpy and all I thought about was food.

3. I ate even worse AFTER the shoot that I did before I started my “diet." I had an “I am free” feeling and thought “let me eat the world!”

4. I eat clean enough that there was no noticeable difference in my body, even with the restrictions.

5. Who  am I trying to fool? I know what my body looks like and the photos should be a strong representation of that. It would not be good business practice to advertise myself a certain way on my comp card and show up to a photo shoot with my body looking different.

I guess my restrictive diet before my first photo shoot was kind of a test. Would I still feel good for a photo shoot without restrictions before? Would I be bloated?  Would I look my best? For my most recent shoot with Elevin I ate my PB, almond butter, oatmeal, quinoa, nuts, mango (dried no sugar added), and mini dark chocolate chips, which are all the things I did not allow myself to have before that first shoot.

While I didn't completely restrict, I DID do things differently for the three days before the shoot:

1. I LOVE broccoli and brussels sprouts, but they can make me bloated and, errr, gassy so I stayed away from them! Yes, they are great foods for a healthy diet when you're trying to lose weight, but I was more concerned with avoiding bloat than dropping pounds.

2. I traded in my daily apples for grapefruit. I chose grapefruit thinking that the fiber pectin would help cleanse my body. I'm not sure if it did anything, but mentally it made me feel better.

How did I feel at this shoot with Eric, you're wondering? AMAZING! I felt better than I did during my first shoot. I felt I had more energy, I was stronger, and I was ready to conquer!

On the morning of the shoot I ate oatmeal, half a banana, and PB. During the day,though, I was only able to scarf down an apple and Asian pear in between shots. My body is used to eating every 2-3 hours, so eating nothing that day wasn't a great idea. But my energy was so high and I was so excited to be doing what I was doing I didn't feel hungry or shaky. It's weird how your body can go in to a ZONE and just GO.

I can’t wait to share more about the shoot with you, tips from the makeup artist, advice from the photographer, and all the other things I learned during the shoot! Stay tuned!