December 3, 2010

Excerpt from Bragg Veg­e­tar­ian Health Recipes — Chap­ter 5

Soups and Vit­a­min Broths

Some nutri­tion­ists look with respect on the tales of the “magic potions” of the Dark Ages: soups brewed with wild herbs and greens of the for­est. Most agree now that the “mag­i­cal broth” had prac­ti­cal and mir­a­cle cura­tive prop­er­ties, rather than super­nat­ural charms.

Through­out his­tory, Europe and Asia suf­fered from food short­ages. Rather than roam the for­est hunt­ing for game and eat­ing wild berries and herbs, Euro­peans crowded into small com­mu­ni­ties and con­cen­trated efforts on wars and muni­tions instead of food. Death, rather than life, was para­mount. Is it any won­der that the magi­cian with his vitamin-rich herb pot, and the old crone with her love potions brewed from for­est reme­dies, could seem­ingly work mir­a­cles? Of all the rich­ness of nature’s gifts to human­ity, the liv­ing, grow­ing foods that nur­ture our bod­ies are mir­a­cles in them­selves! The cus­tom of hav­ing the soup pot on the back of the stove (into which all water left from cook­ing veg­eta­bles, as well as odds and ends of the veg­eta­bles them­selves, were tossed) is a healthy prac­tice in nutri­tional cook­ery. Far too many peo­ple destroy their foods. First, they take car­rots, scrape all the vitamin-rich skin off; toss them in large quan­ti­ties of boil­ing water; boil the life out of them; and throw all the water, into which the vit­a­mins and min­er­als have escaped, down the drain­pipe. Mil­lions feed their sink nature’s rich­est gifts and keep the dead, life­less remain­der to eat!

Save those beet tops, extra spinach leaves, green let­tuce leaves that you think are too dark to serve on the table, tomato skins, skin from any veg­etable you feel you absolutely must peel – all the lit­tle odds and ends and left­overs that you would nor­mally throw away – toss them into the soup pot. I call it my “vit­a­min pot.” Above all, save the pre­cious liq­uids that remain in a pot after cook­ing. You will find no more deli­cious soup in the world than the rich soup made of pot liq­uids and mix­tures of veg­eta­bles that you would ordi­nar­ily dis­card. That, above all, is your basic soup recipe.