This zesty soup is best served with quesadillas. Enjoy!

Serving size: 1 3/4 cups

Nutritional information: 161 calories (20% from fat), 3.5g fat, 0.5g saturated fat, 1.9g monounsaturated fat, 0.8g polyunsaturated fat, 3.8g protein, 31.7g carbohydrate, 6g fiber, 0mg cholesterol, 2.2mg iron, 389mg sodium, 76mg calcium

Minestrone is an Italian soup which takes its name from “minestra” which refers to a hearty or chunky soup. There are probably as many different recipes for minestrone as there are people who cook it and every region of Italy has its traditional minestrone soup for which it is famous. However, all minestrone soups usually feature a tomato based broth (this could be thin or thick) with onion, celery, beans, seasonal vegetables and sometimes pasta or rice.

So minestrone is a soup that very easily adapts itself to what is available in one’s kitchen. And given the ingredients it accommodates, it makes for a nutritious and filling one-dish meal.

This recipe is adapted from Tarla Dalal’s The Complete Italian Cookbook. She says that this particular minestrone with pesto is from Milan. The pesto lends the minestrone a nutty flavour and can be made ahead, but add it just before you finish making the minestrone. This minestrone is best served as soon as it is made.

If you ever find that the rate of cleansing is too much for you, have a bowl of homemade vegetable soup and/or drop back a step in your diet and notice how it calms the process.

Try cooked kale and sausage as a winter comfort food. Germans celebrate winter with a “Gruenkohlfahrt”, which is a brisk hike accompanied by schnapps and a warm kale dinner afterwards. Cooked kale is mixed with mustard, bacon and sausage for a nutritious dinner.

Everyone has different ways of eating kale, one of the most famous is called “Gruenkohl und Pinkel” (also “Bregenwurst”, or “Grützwurst”) a sausage which traditionally contained brain (not any longer), oats, bacon and pork, and is flavored with allspice, cloves, pepper and maybe marjoram. The recipes are held secret and every family has its favorite butcher.

Very small amount of beef boullion. Negligable?