{"id":184,"date":"2014-10-28T00:20:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T00:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/?p=184"},"modified":"2014-10-28T00:20:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T00:20:42","slug":"the-cabbage-soup-experiment-day-one-why-ill-never-be-a-food-blogger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/archives\/184","title":{"rendered":"The Cabbage Soup Experiment: Day One (Why I\u2019ll Never Be a Food Blogger)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started the cabbage soup diet this morning by grieving over what I was going to miss because of the cabbage soup diet: Halloween<\/em>. Last night, I\u2019d committed myself to starting this seven-day torture today\u2014just four days before the biggest chocolate bonanza of the year. Could I be any stupider?<\/p>\n

Moving on…<\/p>\n

Since this was Day One of the diet, I was allowed to eat cabbage soup and fruit. That\u2019s it. Soup and fruit. I raced off to the grocery store, dragged back the $46 worth of supplies needed to make a massive double batch of cabbage soup and dusted off a 12-quart stock pot.<\/p>\n

Normally, I hand-chop veggies (when I use my food processor, the veggies end up looking like they were attacked by rabid ferrets). But this<\/em> particular recipe required 12 onions, a full head of cabbage, eight carrots, four green peppers, two pounds of mushrooms…well, you get the picture. I would have starved to death if I\u2019d tried to hand-chop all of that. So I blasted it all into ferret-chewed pieces in my food processor and tossed it into the 12-quart stock pot. Oddly, the pot was now full. Yet I still needed to add 16 cups of water, two large jugs of V8 juice and four large cans of chopped tomatoes. Something was wrong.<\/p>\n

I found out what was wrong. The recipe called for 12 green<\/em> onions. In my hunger-induced haze, I\u2019d used 12 cooking onions\u2014large<\/em> cooking onions, too. I dragged out my second stock pot, split the huge mound of onions and other veggies as evenly as possible between the two pots and dumped in all the liquids. I cranked up the heat and stirred. After 20 minutes of stirring, it still didn\u2019t look like cabbage soup. Something was wrong.<\/p>\n

I found out what was wrong. My cabbage soup didn\u2019t have any cabbage in it. The stupid cabbage had rolled into a corner when I was unpacking the groceries, and I\u2019d cut up so many veggies, I hadn\u2019t noticed that it was missing. I hadn\u2019t made cabbage soup\u2014I\u2019d made a warm onion slushie.<\/p>\n

I chopped up the damned cabbage and tossed it into the pots. The soup was supposed to simmer two hours before serving, but all I\u2019d had to eat were two apples and some raspberries, and it was now mid-afternoon\u2014I was so hungry my hands were shaking. So I ate two huge bowls of raw cabbage and onion slushie soup. That stopped the hunger pangs, but started a brand-new problem. The cabbage and onions have triggered some sort of weird chemical reaction in my belly. Now, stretching out between me and the keyboard is a monstrous mound where my stomach used to be. I look like I\u2019m about to give birth to a walrus.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to go to bed before I get hungry again\u2014I\u2019d hate to see what another bowl of soup would do. Day Two is coming up. I\u2019ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started the cabbage soup diet this morning by grieving over what I was going to miss because of the cabbage soup diet: Halloween. Last night, I\u2019d committed myself to starting this seven-day torture today\u2014just four days before the biggest chocolate bonanza of the year. Could I be any stupider? Moving on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}