Resting up and chowing down - Beef soup from scratch

The last 5 or 6 weeks I have been gradually ramping up my training, with weekly mileage approaching 50 (not that much in the grand scheme of things, but quite a bit for ME), weekly elevation gain up to 8,400ft, and some gym workouts at the Crossfit Arbor (thanks for helping me work around my bum right hand!).  This week, however, I'm trying to take it easy so that I'll be rested for the Wilson Creek Frozen Feet 50k on Saturday.  As such, a couple short runs (3 miles last night, maybe another 2 or 3 tonight), and one gym workout today are all I plan to do.

Mostly, I just plan to eat!

I want to eat lots of protein to help myself recover and be strong for the race, plenty of fat to keep me healthy and keep my brain sharp, and plenty of carbs to fuel my coming effort.  So basically, I plan to eat plenty of everything!  Sweet!

When I'm not running very much I try not to eat too many grains, but for the rest of this week I think I'll be consuming copious amounts of rice and pasta (in addition to my usual MASSIVE pile of veggies, and some meat) in order to "carbo load".  

Last night's dinner (and today's lunch), was a nice fatty beef soup.  We made the broth from scratch with some nice fatty pieces of meat and bone, an onion, a carrot, some bay leaves, some sprigs of thyme, salt, and pepper.  We let that boil all day, then when we got home from work, removed all the solid ingredients from our now-tasty broth. Then we added chopped up beef, a couple small red potatoes, and a MASSIVE pile of veggies.  For veggies we used bok choy, celery, onion, sugar snap peas, carrots, parsnips, turnips, a serrano pepper, parsley, and . . . I'm probably forgetting a few.  Oh, and we squeezed some lime into our bowl before eating.

My beautiful wife chopped everything up the night before while we were working on our scallop-arugula salad, so that when we got home on Tuesday all we had to do was dump the ingredients into the boiling broth, wait 30 minutes or so, and then eat.  Super easy!

We haven't made a lot of soups, so I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but after scarfing several bowls, I think I'll call it a success!