SIMPLE & GOOD Chickpea and Butternut Squash Soup

SIMPLE & GOOD Chickpea and Butternut Squash Soup

With a simple spice mix embracing the flavors of Morocco and Tunisia , this delicious soup offers a tasty base for a nourishing meal. This recipe reflects what I demonstrated in the video, and will easily serve 6-8 people. I was delighted to have plenty left for another meal later this week, and to freeze for the future. Would be especially nice with warm flatbread and a fresh crisp salad. As a starter, I served a hot steamed artichoke. A terrific meal.

Enjoy, and tell me what you think, and how you added your own touches.

Although I used the link on the Fatty Acid Ratio chart that I referenced in the video, it doesn’t appear to be available in that expanded-food-list form, which included vegetables.
This is what I found:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_ratio_in_food

PRINTABLE RECIPE: https://nansimonsen.com/dishes/chickpea-and-butternut-squash-soup/

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Hi, I’m Nan Simmonson. I’m a nationally board certified health and wellness coach and the author of Aging Powerfully, which I wrote when I was about to turn 70. That was about 5 years ago to celebrate 70 being the beginning of decades of good health because I had discovered as a health and wellness coach with a lifestyle medical practice that if we followed the pillars of lifestyle as medicine, one of which is whole food, plant-based dietary lifestyle, and I did that. We’ve been, my husband and I have been plant-based exclusively going on seven years now. And so I’m always looking for some great recipes. And I also am quite influenced by what I’ve learned from Dr. goal of Brooke Goldner because I have taken her I have done her protocol and her rapid recovery group understanding the value and the importance of raising our omega-3 fatty acid ratio over our six or keeping them even or letting the six being a little higher. you have these essential uh fatty acids um three and six and well nine not so much um but the body doesn’t create those and the omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. The omega sixs are an important important part of our immune system but when they’re out of balance they become inflammatory. balance should be one to one ratio. One to three maybe on the sixes, maybe at the far end, one to nine on the the sixes, but no, because the fatty the omega6 fatty acids are in all of the seed and the the vegetable oils except olive oil and not so much canola oil. and in very high ratios. And because in all processed foods, you get so many of the oils that are loaded with omega sixes that the standard American diet, which is 70% processed food, is in the 1 to 20 or 30 or 40 range. And that’s why we’re inflamed. And that’s why quite frankly we’re so sick with chronic diseases. At 75 I’m not. And I’ve been paying attention to this. But when I even feeling healthy but having a little bit of inflammation going on and a challenge with an autoimmune disease, I took her protocol. I saw that the pain I had from a structural problem on my knee and that is a very badly torn meniscus even that didn’t hurt when I was strictly on her protocol because I was so hyper nourished that the inflammation was at its very least. So I’m going to be talk why am I going on and on about this? because I realized and it was relatively recently that there are well there are there’s a high ratio of omega-3 to sixes in flax seed, chia seed in the fish population and their oils. But I don’t eat um any animal at all. Everything I eat is plant-based for a lot of other good reasons. Um, but what I didn’t real and I knew that in the greens that Well, let me show you something. I’m way off track, but I’m on a roll. So, I’m going to take this and then I’ll show you. No, let me do this. Let me get this started. This recipe is a recipe for a chickpea and butternut squash soup. And it’s super simple. A bunch of spices, but that’s it. And some onion. And I want to mention because I I don’t know if I can mention that I don’t use oil in my cooking. Why? Because most of the oils other than olive oil are very high in omega sixes. Olive oil can’t be heated over 375 without being broken down. So I don’t use um olive oil for cooking and we really shouldn’t at high heat. It’s more of a splash over and I don’t do that. Plus, at almost 75, I work hard. No, I don’t work hard to maintain a steady weight. Um, which I have for years now because I don’t throw oil on everything. I can eat a bowl of this soup, oh, for maybe 300 calories. If I had put 2, three, four tablespoons, which recipes call for in the soup, it would have gone up by 100, 200 calories. You do that with every meal, every time you cook, with every recipe because almost all recipes are loaded with oil. And it’s very hard to maintain a a the weight you want um and still eat well, as much as I like to. I like a big full plate of food and I don’t want to think that it’s a bunch of oil that I couldn’t taste anyway. So, that’s my story. Okay. So, the onion went into an empty pot. And this is a the the Maui onion, which is like a sweet onion. It doesn’t matter. It could be a yellow onion. It could have been a red onion. And I’m letting it weep and then it will caramelize as it does that and turn light brown. But the thing I wanted to show you and I’ll put this link in here. This is from wikipedia.org fatty acid ratio chart. It shows the ratio of foods. Not only the ratio, but the milligrams of omega sixs, milligrams of omega-3s, and then their ratios, the sixes first and then the threes to follow. In most nuts, we know nuts are healthy. For example, the ratio of almonds, because almonds are very low in omega-3, is over 2,000 to one. So, if I’m really working hard to get my omega-3s up, I’m going to leave almonds alone for now. Um, however, the chia seeds and the flax seeds are, for example, one to three. In other words, they are um the chia seeds are higher in threes. The flax seeds are even higher in threes. People think hemp seed is a good source of omega-3. Well, it is. It’s got a lot of omega-3, but the ratio is the the ratio is basically 3:1 of sixes to three. So, it’s heavier in the omega sixes. So, I won’t do that while I’m on a healing protocol, on an anti-inflammatory protocol. Hemp is a good seed, but I just won’t do that. And of the actual nuts, walnut is the highest of the nuts that we typically eat in omega-3s. And still it is higher in sixes than threes by about a ratio of 4:1. Okay. So why did I go into all of this as I’m talking about foods um typical foods? Well, the greens, and this is one of the reasons her protocol, which is what I call a fine point on anti-inflammation, even greater than all the other right things I did with a whole food plant-based diet, is that for example, almost all the deep leafy greens, arugula, um the lettucees, uh Brussels sprouts, cabbages, um spinach, kale, colored greens, they’re all almost, well, every one of them except maybe well wow chard is way up on omega-3s over omega sixs. So the greens are where you’re going to get a lot of omega-3s without the omega sixs. But what I didn’t know, and I could have just started out saying that, but I, as I said, I’m on a roll, is that some of the squashes are very high in well, are yeah, very high in omega-3s and certainly higher, not necessarily very high, but higher in threes than sixes. In other words, low on the omega sixes. And they include zucchini. Would never have guessed that. To me, zucchini is almost a benign food because it it it’s not really as high in nourishment and phytonutrients and phyitochemicals as uh let’s say kale or spinach, but now I know it’s high on the omega-3s or at least it has that higher balance. But another one is butternut squash and another one is acorn squash. So, when I saw this recipe, all of that to say, and I hope you got a bit of an education out of this, and I’m watching this brown or turn golden, and no, I haven’t had to put oil in here. And I will mention that this is a double of the recipe. So, that was a lot of onion because I’ve doubled the recipe. My feeling has always been if I’m going to take the time to make the mess, I’m going to get something more than just one or maybe two meals out of it, I intend to put some of this in my freezer library. So when I am in a busy day or maybe I’m going to be gone for the evening for a meeting, I can pull something out of that, defrost it, and my husband has lunch or dinner or we have dinner. Um, so I am going to be back to you in just a moment because this is just about ready for me to put the other ingredients in, which include the spices. And I’m going to grab them and be right back. Okay, so the onion has a nice golden brown to it. And I’m going to before it gets any more brown, and I don’t really want it to brown with this ingredient in it, and that is chopped garlic. I, as I said, this is double the recipe. So this is six cloves and they were big fat fresh cloves of garlic. And the reason I say I don’t want it to brown. I want it to cook a little bit, take the edge off the garlic, but if garlic gets very brown, it becomes bitter and we don’t want that. And I’m going to let that cook for just a minute. And then I’m going to add spices such as cumin, cinnamon, and coriander. And I may on my own. And if I do, I’ll put this in the notes because I think I would like this in it and it’s not part of the recipe. Put in some smoky paprika. That makes it very Tunisian or Moroccan. These are spices that are oh [Music] imaginative. It’s a great combination. And with the sweet of the butternut sauce, this is going to be terrific. Okay, I’m going to put the sauces the spices in and then I’m going to what you call toast them. And that is that just for about a minute. I’m going to keep stirring. They’re sticking to the bottom a bit. And if you could smell this, this is the the the spices lightly toast. It brings out their flavor and it’s going to really set the the rest of the dish up beautifully. So now what I’m adding to this until the squash becomes tender is butternut squash. And I’ll show you something about the squash in a minute. Let me get this stirred in. Tomato. Couple of cans. But again, I’ve doubled the recipe of diced tomato and my own homemade broth. I pull it, remember I mentioned my freezer library. I pull it out of the freezer library. And at first, I was only going to make a single recipe that even has some ice still in it. Um, I had this dated and the the name of what’s in there because you can’t tell one frozen thing from the other quite frankly. Uh, and then I decided to double it and I had to defrost another one. So, I have my homemade broth from scraps that I put in the freezer in a onegon baggie. And when that’s filled things with like celery and onion and the ends of green onions and anyway I I even have a video on that in my YouTube channel. And the garbanzo beans are going to wait because the only thing they have to do for this recipe is to warm up at the end and then I’ll stir in some cilantro. So I’m going to bring you that or back for that. But I’m going to give this, let me take a look. I’m going to give this about 30 minutes to cook, which is perfect because we’ll be eating in about 40 minutes. This is actually that’s not So, this gives it time to even sit for just a bit and kind of settle. Um, it is 4:30. This is a Monday. And what I do on Monday is I do a lot of batch cooking. So, I just finished batch cooking beets that I put in my chopped salad and potatoes that my husband gets all week long with his openf face avocado sandwich. Um, just piled up and open face because it gives that much more room to pile things on. And I have porttoella mushroom that I’m going to bake and then put some um a brown rice mixture in for him. But I’m doing her protocol to kind of relieve a little bit of soreness from my niece. So I do that from time to time when I really want to hit home with just the most nutritious foods I can get. I’ll do her protocol, Dr. Goldmer’s protocol for a little bit. And that her protocol is high raw. So, and with greens, flax seed, chia, flax seed, chia seed for the omega-3s. And that’s where this focus is. And um plenty of water and massive amounts of raw uh vegetables. And so anyway, so I’ll be adding this a little later. I’ll be back to you in just a bit to show you the end result and I hope you got something out of this. Consider subscribing to my channel. Give me a thumbs up if you liked what you saw. Consider aging powerfully. It’s a good read about lifestyle as medicine. As a matter of fact, the word powerfully is 10 is an acronym for 10 lifestyle modalities that will help us live and age with power. And it’s a lot more fun to do that than to start rather than squaring the curve. Live live and then when our body is just had it, boom, pass away quickly. as opposed to what you see so much in this country, people in their 50s and 60s on bags of medication because their body is giving up because this processed food culture and the the fatty foods and the fatty meat culture and the fast foods and door dashes of who knows what people get when they buy that way. All of that is not helping us age well. cooking at home, knowing what’s going in your food does. And speaking of that, I mentioned the butternut squash. If you’re not familiar with butternut squash quite often, it’s more of a bulb in the back and a thin neck. Well, I found this one that was This is the other half of part of what went into here. Truth be told, I was at Costco, bought the big container of cubed butternut squash, brought it here, and cubed it just a little finer because some of the pieces were huge, and realized that I didn’t have enough to double the recipe. I would have been fine if I hadn’t decided to double. So, I ran to our green groceryer. I actually have one of those. this this family that opened up a little store in a strip mall of vegetables and fruits and they’re marvelous. And I ran there and they had this. So, I used half of it. But I wanted to show you what I do with this and show you something else. This one because it wasn’t the big bulb at one end had just the tiniest bit of seeds. And typically a butternut squash can have a whole big belly of seeds and then a big opening that is well just air. Um well air once you cut it open. So what I did is I brought this home and put it in the microwave for 2 minutes to soften the skin a little bit. And then I have a very strong I like this brand. It’s Titan. Ti t a n. And it’s a very strong um peeler. And I just peeled it like that and then cut it and cubed it. So, wanted to show you that. And I’ll do the rest of this now that you’ve seen it. And I’ll be back to you in just This is it. It’s dinner time. I want to show you the soup. It’s just beautiful and it smells. So, I’ve spent time in Morocco and in and in well, South Africa, all over um and Turkey and Egypt and Israel and Jordan. I’m going on and on. And I love Middle Eastern and South African food. I added more chickpeas. I decided this was brothy enough to be thicker with our protein source. Then I’m going to, and this is also something that you would find in Moroccan recipes. I have a bag of shredded kale from Trader Joe’s. I’m going to put a handful in here. I Well, let me show you the soup as is. Excuse me. It would be fine as is with just a little bit of chopped well cilantro, but I love to add additional greens, additional nourishment to everything. And I’m going to stir in that handful of kale, which I like just as much as the cilantro. I’ll put in a little bit more. There we go. Oh my gosh, that’s so pretty. And it’s going to soften just being in there before we eat. We have a artichoke on the table that we’re going to have. And no, I don’t dip the leaves in oil. My husband likes a vegan ranch that I have and I use one of Dr. Goldener’s dressings. Look at this. Let me turn this down. Isn’t that a beauty? And it smells luscious. And I did and I did add some um smokeoky paprika. I could have added some saffron. I could have had a ball with this. as it is. It doesn’t need anything more. This is going to be perfect. So, I hoped you enjoyed what you saw. I’ll cool this down up. You know what? I’m going to show you a trick. I went to my freezer drawer because when I say I’m going to cool this down, we’re going to serve it, but I want to get this in the refrigerator tonight. It’s 5:30. What am I going to do? It’s really, really hot. This is a silicone bag. You can find these in a number of sizes. This one is um I don’t even know the size, but it probably holds about three cups of water, maybe four, but I I think it’s more like three. Keep it in the freezer. When I make something like this, I when I’m finished serving everything I’m going to serve, I will plunk this down in this ice will defrost as the soup is cooling down. And by Oh, I don’t know. in a couple of hours, a few hours, I’m going to have soup cool enough to put into containers to put in my freezer. So, I thought I’d show you that because it’s a really handy trick and I saw it from somebody else. Have a great day. I know I’m going to Don’t forget to subscribe, give me a thumbs up, and hope to see you again. Bye bye.