Happy Meal for Thursday's Healing Seminar

One thing that is important to me as a chef is to have food that is beautiful to look at, in addition to being tasty. If something is supposedly "healthy" but is brown and unidentifiable, I don't believe that someone will feel good when they eat it. For example, sometimes, if I'm in a hurry, I will go into one of our local health food stores to see what they have in their deli. At times, what they have appears overcooked and definitely not fresh. I just know that if I eat that, even though it's from the health food store, I'm going to feel tired and sluggish. Here in Hawaii, they teach people to "Eat A Rainbow" and I believe in this philosophy. So, here is the menu for the "Happy Meal" we had last night for Dr. Terry Shintani's Healing Seminar:

Brown Rice with Wild Rice
Spring Green Salad with Tomatoes and Yellow Peppers
Poppyseed Dressing
Marinated Garbanzo Bean Salad (packed with healthy fresh vegetables)
Sweet Vegetable Soup (with corn, kabocha, carrots, and onions)
Watermelon

We actually had all the colors of the rainbow included in this meal.

For the soup, it wasn't necessary to use any type of pre-purchased or packaged seasoning. I looked in the refrigerator to see what was left over and needed to be used up. I found cabbage, onion, and carrot and cooked these until they were soft, along with some kombu sea vegetable to create a tasty broth. I strained out the vegetables, reserved the liquid, and created this as the base. Then, to create the soup, I used chopped carrots, corn, onion, kabocha, bayleaf, and more kombu, along with fresh water. At the end, I added salt to taste so that the naturally sweet flavor of the vegetables was enhanced.