Have you ever looked for a tasty but convenient way of adding highly nutricious yet low-fat and low-sugar fare to your diet? Well, in my numerous campaigns to lose weight over the years, I’ve often eaten pre-made salsa right out of the jar. It is low in calories and fat, and practically all vegetables. Plus, it contains lots of cooked tomatoes; a food that experts say reduces colon cancer and a host of other ailments. Salsa’s contribution to the great flavor you get when you eat it on corn chips is unmistakable.
So I wondered what salsa would taste like, by itself. Sometime in the nineties, my curiosity got the best of me, and I tried it, and discovered that salsa is wonderful to eat right out of the jar. Indeed, in 2001, the last time I lost over thirty pounds, a sixteen ounce jar of that deep orange liquid salad was all I’d eat for lunch on a typical day, and the pounds just melted off at a rate of two per week in February of that year. Indeed salsa works well to enhance the effectiveness of dieting to lose weigh and supercharge the immune system because of its high vegetable content.
But after eight years, salsa from the jar grew boring to me. So I stopped eating it for a while. But then last week, Mom heard about a salsa chicken recipe, in which you put about thirty-two ounces of salsa in a crock pot with two pounds of chicken breast pieces. Then, you cook it all day, and then dig into it for supper. We tried that, and the chicken made the dish quite filling, while the salsa in it made it taste very, very good. Surprisingly to me, the hot salsa tasted as good as, if not better than, cool salsa right from the jar.
So today, I was scrounging around for something to eat for lunch, and there in the refrigerator, was a full jar of Carita salsa. But the thought of eating that stuff at thirty-five degrees seemed none too appealing, as I’d always eaten it at room temperature during the 2001 diet. I prefer it on the warmer side because as I’ve progressed through my forties, my teeth have become more sensitive to cold. These days, even thinking about eating chilly foods can make me shiver and shudder. Brrrrrr! Get it out of here! Further, we had no done chicken around, and I really didn’t wish to cook any; all we have right now are frozen breasts and wings.
But then, I remembered just how flavorful the hot (temperature-wise) salsa was last week in that chicken recipe, and wondered how a salsa soup would taste. What if I just put the salsa in a bowl and heated it for four minutes in the microwave? Well, I did that and I must say that salsa makes a great, albeit non traditional vegetable soup. Specifically, it’s vegetable soup with a Mexican twist; it’s got lots of tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic, (though it’s missing the carrots) and other spices, and had the consistency of a Campbell’s Chunky Soup. That is to say, it was thicker than what I would call a typical soup, but still soupy enough to qualify as a soup. It filled me up, and in fact, the energy I’m consuming in writing this piece is coming from that satisfying lunch.
Now there’s probably no food that’s good in unlimited quantities and the same is true of this. The Carita salsa I used today has lots of sodium (over 5000 grams in one 24-oz jar). Thus, you’d only want to eat this a time or two a week, and if you’re sodium-sensitive, you’d want to find the no-salt-added salsa. But at only 315 calories per jar, salsa qualifies as an effective alternative to the higher fat lunch items that people generally eat and that help keep our nation obese. So if you’re looking for a highly satisfying yet healthy food for your diet, try eating this salsa soup.
Tom Hesley
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