Chicken and Broccoli Soup

This is a healthy recipe.  It is a cream soup, but no cream is used, just regular 1% milk. No oil, no thickeners like flour or cornstarch, no butter and no fancy ingredients.  Sometimes the best food is the simplest.  I didn't take as many photos, but the soup is really easy.

1 Chicken breast
about 4 cups of water
2 chicken bouillon cubes
2 bay leaves
about 3 cups of broccoli
1/2 an onion
about 1/2-3/4 cup of whole wheat noodles
2 c. milk
Salt and pepper to taste

boil the chicken in the water and when it is white pull it out and cut it. Put it back in the cooking pot with the water. Add bouillon and onion and bay leaves. Simmer for 5 min.

While simmering the chicken and onion, wash your broccoli. I didn't bother to cut mine, because I like chunks of broccoli in my soup. Toss in your noodles. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat a little and simmer for 15 min. or until your broccoli is soft and your noodles are done.

Add your milk and boil again. Once at a boil take off the heat, or turn your burner to warm until it is time to eat.  At this point you can take out some broccoli chunks and blend them with a little milk to make your soup thicker, but I didn't feel like doing the extra dishes.

Healthy, diabetic friendly soup.  I did add a little Parmesan and mozzarella cheese.  What can I say? I love cheese.

Some days are better than others

 Some days I do really well, and some days. . . well, we all have those days don't we.  I guess the trick is acknowledging what we are really doing to our bodies and accepting the responsibility for it.  So here we go.

So breakfast was whole wheat toast with some melted cheddar cheese.  I actually only ate one of these slices. I probably should have added some fruit, but as we have already discussed, I have a hard time eating breakfast.

So I really wanted some chocolate milk.  It's not the best choice, so I compromised. I filled my glass 1/2 full of chocolate milk, and then. . .

I added regular 1% white milk to the glass to fill it the rest of the way.  Was it as chocolaty as I wanted? No. was it an acceptable alternative that got rid of the craving? Yes.  It's all about moderation.

And then, well, I finished off my kid's pudding.  At least it was sugar-free.  Oh well, the thing is, by photographing it and counting it, I have to own it.  That is a big part of this journey.

I was too tired to make myself a good lunch, so I had the other piece of melted cheese.

And 1/2 a glass of cranberry juice.

Dinner was a chicken and broccoli soup that I invented.  It was delicious, and for a cream soup, it was super low in calories and carbs.  I added some saltine crackers and crystal light.

Bad picture, but this is 1/2 a tuna salad sandwich on whole wheat. Soup can only fill a person up so much.

Really hungry before bed.  2 Tbl peanut butter and a medium apple. Yum!

I had a chocolate craving. A small handful is 70 calories. I did add a few milk chocolate pieces, because in my journey to dark chocolate, I need some that tastes good. lol