Bonnie:“This isn’t your grandmother’s lentil soup,” touts Pacific All Natural’s box. It’s also not my lentil soup. Pacific All Natural Vegetable Lentil & Roasted Red Pepper Soup is vegetarian, like my mulligatawny soup but unlike my stick-to-your-ribs lentil and kielbasa potage.
I do, though, really like this soup’s hearty flavor from the tender lentils, black beans, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, celery and corn, seasoned with cumin and chili. It’s perfect on a chilly autumn or winter night, when you don’t have time to prepare a pot of our own — or your freezer cupboard is barren. I mention freezer, as whenever I make soup, I prepare a stockpot full and store various useful-size portions (1 cup, 2 cups, 4 cups) to serve throughout the season.
I also like lots about Pacific Natural Foods as a company. I like its dedication to packaging wholesome, all-natural and organic ingredients that taste good, and its standard of tracing the origin of every ingredient it uses. I also like its commitment to sustainability. This soup is packed in an easy-to-open, pour and close, BPA-free carton that’s shelf-stable for up to two years. According to the company, that carton is made with paper from sustainably managed forests and doesn’t require as many raw materials to manufacture, therefore reducing the energy needed to process and ship. All good practices for our conserving natural resources.
As for nutrition this — like most soups — has a bit too much sodium (760 mg), so be sure to balance the rest of the day’s food with lower-sodium options. On the plus side, Vegetable Lentil & Roasted Red Pepper Soup is also rich in fiber (7 grams) and protein (8 grams) and is an excellent source of vitamin C and a good source of iron, all in just one cup.
Bryan: Pacific Foods is a company that says it loves food, and that really shows. To some people, food is simply fuel, consumed to keep moving, flavored to be palatable. To others, though, food is a love, a dedication and appreciation more akin to an art than a commodity. Pacific Natural Foods finds itself in line with the second philosophy, producing a wonderful array of flavors while using all-natural, organic ingredients. Its vast collection of healthy, delicious soups allows the taste of nature to speak for itself, without the complications of artificial flavoring. Pure and simple, and truly tasty.
Long before the introduction of the USDA “Organic” label, Pacific Foods had come up with its own program to ensure the integrity of its ingredients, certifying produce and meats directly to their source! There are few food companies on earth that can tell you where every ingredient used in its products comes from. Not only can Pacific Foods do that, amazingly in most situations it will even tell you that it came from its very own farms!
What does that all mean for you? Well, a darn good spoonful of soup, that’s what! Creamy Tomato is just the first act. How about Creamy Butternut Squash, Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato, French Onion, Cashew Carrot Ginger, Spicy Black Bean or Curried Red Lentil? That’s really just to start with, though. Pacific also offers a full lineup of ‘”Hearty” soups ranging from Poblano Pepper and Corn Chowder to Chicken Spinach Penne Soup.
Wonderfully puréed organic vegetables make the texture of the creamy soups a sensationally smooth experience. Though I’m usually an unflappable Butternut Squash Soup fan, I was drawn to the Curried Red Lentil, which made for a surprisingly interesting counterweight to a grilled cheese with sharp cheddar on rye bread I had been working on. A bit of spice to duel with the flavorful cheese and tangy bread left me with a new found appreciation for lentils, and certainly for Pacific Foods.
Eric: Soup may have been the food of peasants, but for me, it’s a cuisine meant for kings. My love affair with soups started about the time my mother was in the recipe stage of her life (cookbooks, freelance writing and a daily column). One of her many focuses was “quick meals,” and many of those recipes were dedicated to soup. I had never realized it prior to my love affair, but soup is a hearty meal, and most of the soups I enjoyed were vegetable (with a bit of chicken broth as the base). To this day, I still (and will) eat soup for the majority of my meals during the winter season — especially while living in a ski town.
As someone who loves to cook, soups are always a melting pot of creativity; however, with a work schedule that keeps me busy 12 hours a day, the ease of pre-packaged soups come in handy. Pacific’s All-Natural soups are a beacon of light in a heavily salt-infused, sometimes bland, usually over-concentrated, prepackaged-soup society. By offering a variety of soups to choose from, and focusing on all-natural organic ingredients, Pacific soups are the black sheep (in a good sense) of the soup flock.
Leave A Comment