Tweaking and Rip Esselstyn's Kole's Creamy Cauliflower Soup

(Note:  This is actually an older post that I had saved as a draft.  Interesting to me to read it now as I have been doing pretty well at tweaking!  This is why I encourage anyone to blog or at least journal; it truly does help us note our progress.).

I suppose it is a symptom of living on a planet with a huge force like gravity that things have a natural tendency to 'go down'.  I had this thought as I was contemplating why good habits and good intentions seem to slowly slip away; why do the clear and concise edges of a commitment tend to blur with the passage of time and why is there always a 'force' of sorts that we seem to be working against?

I was examining my food intake and realizing that I have slipped a bit, even picked up a few of the hard won lost pounds and it is time to get the nutritional Sharpie pen out and more clearly delineate my lines again.

I'm not sucking down vegan chili dogs or vats of vegan ice cream, but there is just a slip here and there....like using bottled salad dressing, that even though is fat free and pretty darn clean ingredients-wise, does have 'gasp' sugar.  :-0  And I have no excuse since I have a perfectly good salad dressing recipe and my trusty Vitamix, Viv, to help me whip up a dressing in oh, about 4 minutes, if I take my time and clean up afterwards.

Still....soooo much easier to just open a bottle.  Why is that route more attractive?  Why not take pride in the extra effort to make it from scratch and realize that I am worth that effort, that a few minutes here and there will EXTEND MY LIFE, and, more importantly, enhance the QUALITY of it.

So, I'm entering another 'tweaking' phase.  I have had my greatest success when more closely following kind of a mesh of Caldwell Esselstyn's and Joel Fuhrman's food programs, so am going to ensure I get my beans/legumes daily, go back to the huge salads (with homemade dressings), and embrace my inner Food Nazi and police myself against ALL processed foods.

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I decided to once again reorganize my active food folders....two little photo brag books that I use. (These are in addition to the large folders, the computer recipe file and the collection of about 20 vegan cookbooks :-0).  One is for my 'GO-TO' recipes and the other is a 'TRY THIS' file.  They had gotten all sloppy again, with recipes just shoved in regardless of where they are supposed to be.  In clearing those out I found a recipe I had copied from Rip Esselstyn's Engine 2 Diet book.  Kole's Creamy Cauliflower Soup.  I already had it in my 'GO-TO' file but hadn't gotten around to trying it yet.  I love about everything Esselstyn and attribute much of my success to reading Engine 2 Diet and Caldwell Essestyn's Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.  Anyway, I finally got around to trying Kole's Soup. 

I made this up extra thick as my husband likes what he calls "porridge" along with my homemade bread.  It was really very good.  I think that this soup would also make a great sauce over rice and veggies, or pasta, or even some toast.  It definitely will continue to reside in my 'GO-TO' file. 
Kole's Creamy Cauliflower Soup isn't listed here, but you can find many recipes on the Engine 2 site here:  http://www.managercomplete.com/engine2/recipes.aspx  as well as lots of other resources.  I highly recommend the Engine 2 Diet books, and anything 'Esselstyn'.

Kole's Creamy Cauliflower Soup, Rip Esselstyn, Engine2 Diet

Sue, tweaking-it, in Ohio