Livin' Lean Topic Tuesday: "Souper" Soups

With the weather turning colder, warm soups start to sound really good right about now. Although my cooking has expanded a great deal over the past year or so, my husband still wears the cooking crown for two things; grilling steaks and makin' soups. There is a Cheesy Potato Soup that he makes that would just rock your world! It is my favorite. But this post isn't about the soups he makes (sorry Rudy), it's about the soups that we are going to create in the New England Country Soup's Soup Challenge!

New England Country Soups prides themselves on making delicious and nutritious soups in many varieties. After reading about the ingredients and tasting the products, I can certainly see why. These people know what they are doing when it comes to healthy soups.

With a simple objective, to "make great tasting, good for you, shelf-stable soups with the same, all natural ingredients we use in our kitchen", the three founding "foodies" were able to locate all natural ingredient suppliers in order to make soups that taste great and are convenient for our busy lives. Thank you New England Country Soups!

So, what's this about a challenge? Well...New England Country Soup, an all natural, ready-to-serve soup brand based in Cambridge, is challenging folks to a Soup Challenge. Essentially, New England Country Soup is taking the bold step of challenging consumers to beat their soup recipes on taste and nutrition. Interested consumers can enter their recipes online, and then 15 semi-finalists in New England will get to challenge New England Country Soup in a live cook-off in January. Consumers will be competing for the chance to win a New England weekend getaway for two to Martha’s Vineyard. Sounds fun, right?

Consumers in 14 states can enter and they can choose to compete against any New England Country Soup flavor including Chicken Corn Chowder, Yankee White Bean, New England Clam Chowder, Chicken Pomodoro, Lentil, Nana’s Chicken Soup, Caribbean Black Bean and Sweet Chicken Curry. To learn more about the challenge and how to enter, please visit http://www.soupchallenge.com/.

I think this recipe makeover is going to be a challenge unlike any I have done before. It's one thing to make something heavy into something healthy, but how do you take something that is already awesome when it comes to flavor and nutrition and then improve on that?!?! Well, we shall see. I think this means a lot of soup experimentation for the Rudolph House between now and January 9th, 2011!

I hope you are as excited about this "souper" challenge as I am. Soup is a great way to pack in tons of nutrition and really satisfy your hunger. Plus, the great thing about soup is that there is usually enough left-over for the next day or two. Soup is a great way to stretch our food dollars as well. With all those reasons, you gotta give this challenge a try!

Which soup will you challenge?

Let's go, Cookin' Lean Crew! Show New England how to cook some healthy, out-of-this-world-delicious soup!


SOUP CHALLENGE STARTER KIT GIVEAWAY: Kit includes three jars of soup and 3 spices used in the soups. Visit New England Country Soup on FACEBOOK to enter!