To me, “Boxing Day” is just the day after Christmas. A holiday, (yay!) but truthfully it never occurred to me that there may be more to it than that, or that it didn’t get it’s name because that’s the day when you put the ornaments back in their boxes. As it turns out, there’s all kinds of history and tradition to Boxing Day, but I’ll leave it to Wikipedia if you want to know more about that.
For the purposes of this post, Boxing Day is also about what to do with all the left-overs. Personally, I’m a big fan of the turkey sandwich. Especially on left-over dinner rolls with butter, mayo, left-over cranberry sauce, salt, pepper and Havarti if there is any in the house. Delicious, but not my best choice if I’m getting back on my healthy-habits bandwagon.
There’s been a lot of writing in praise of soups in the last couple of years. (Sorry chowder-lovers but we’re talking clear broth and veggie-bases here.) The big benefit of soup-meals to dieters is the amount of water in a nice steamy bowl. Generally speaking, food that contains a lot of water and fiber will help you feel fuller without calorie-loading. It’s also one of the great things about leafy, veggie salads. But it’s winter and it’s cold so who really wants to curl up with a salad?
If you make your own broth, kudos to you! The more you make yourself the better you can control what goes into your body, also it smells awesome in the house while it’s simmering. If you’re not a broth-maker, there are some really nice ones in the grocery stores, but do yourself a favour and look for the low-sodium version of whatever brand you like. I was shocked to see how much salt goes into a plain old fat-free chicken broth and there is no sense in taking in all that extra water if you’re only going to retain it!
Once you have your broth of choice you can load up the pot with just about any combination of meat and veg to your personal taste. I tried out the Turkey Soup With Egg Noodles and Vegetables recipe on foodnetwork.com after Thanksgiving and it’s a really nice one. This weekend, I found two more fantastic looking turkey soup recipes in my inbox that I will post to the Alternative Kitchen discussion board on the Promises Facebook page. Thanks so much to Kathy and Cathy for emailing those! (Do you two know each other or is that a coincidence?)
As I’ve mentioned before, please feel free to share your ideas on the discussion board, or email me, (jules@promisescomic.com) and I’ll pass them along. I’m always happy hearing from you!
