My mate Frank is a big guy. He has been a keen sportsman all his life and climbs mountains on his days off. He's almost two metres tall and looks like the Terminator in silhouette. Luckily, for the world around him, he's a very nice man.
Frank knows a thing or two about sporty diets and this is one of his recipes. This is a low fat, low carbohydrate soup that is apparently very good for losing weight rapidly, provided you eat it and nothing else for a few days. Be warned however, that such an approach to dieting is rather drastic and could be dangerous for some people. It would be better to use this recipe sensibly as part of a more varied diet if you want to lose weight. Having this soup once a day instead of your usual lunch or dinner would reduce your calorie intake significantly, as long as you didn't start eating lots of chocolate and cake in the evening because you felt hungry.
If you opt for Frank's approach and decide to eat nothing except this soup, you might be interested in the second part of the procedure if you are preparing for a sports event. According to Frank, if you continue with the soup but also start eating mountains of boiled brown rice two days before your event, you will be in tip-top condition on the day - lean, mean and with loads of carbohydrate reserves ready to blast you into the front position.
It was my idea to add fresh green herbs to this recipe. I used dill, parsley and spring onion but you could experiment with different herbs. You can also vary the vegetables to provide some variety while maintaining the low calorie quality of the soup. Try, for example, adding or substituting broccoli, red or green pepper cauliflower, spinach, radish or beetroot.
Ingredients
1 large cucumber
2 tomatoes
1 stick of celery
1 onion
A quarter of a head of cabbage
1 or 2 vegetable stock cubes
1 bay leaf
Fresh green herbs
2 -3 litres of water
Salt
Heat the water and chop all the vegetables. Add the vegetables
to the boiling water and cook for about 10 minutes. Add the stock cubes and
the bay leaf and cook for another 5 or 10 minutes. Add a little salt if necessary
then turn off the heat and add the chopped green herbs.