Grandpa Jack’s Minestrone

I think I was still in college when I first had this soup, and I knew then that I needed the recipe. (By the way, every now and then, I’m a little aghast that I haven’t shared this with you yet; it’s one of my all-time favorites, and it’s also now a great way to get my kids to happily eat a load of veggies.)

My grandparents called this “Upstate Minestrone,” because they got the recipe from some friends on the East Coast who would prepare a pot of this soup to simmer while they took an afternoon drive “upstate.” I prefer to just call it “Grandpa Jack’s Minestrone” because it reminds me of my talented grandfather who passed away about 5 months after Tito was born.

Now that #3 is due to arrive any day now (any minute would be nice), I found some zucchini and cabbage on sale and chopped them up in soup-ready bags to keep in the freezer. It’s not totally a freezer meal, but having the veggies (I froze the carrots with them, too) ready to go will make for a pretty quick and really healthy meal in the first few months of newborn haze.

Feel free to add more veggies to this soup if that suits you — my mom always likes to add red bell peppers to hers. You can also add other types of beans, use spicy Italian sausage instead of sweet Italian sausage, and top the finished soup with pesto and/or parmesan cheese. Or, it’s great “as is.” However you choose to ladle it up, I hope you’ll give it a try and enjoy it as much as we do.

Grandpa Jack’s Minestrone

1 lb sweet Italian sausage 1 T cooking oil 1 c diced onion 1 clove minced garlic 2 small zucchini, sliced 1 c sliced carrots 1 can diced tomatoes 2 cans beef broth (or ~3 cups water + 3 t beef Better than Bouillon) 1 t salt 1/4 t pepper 1 can great northern beans 2 c finely shredded cabbage chopped fresh parsley 1 t basil

Slice sausage crosswise about 1/2″ thick; brown with oil in a deep saucepan. Add onion, garlic, carrots, and basil. Cook for 5 minutes, until veggies begin to soften. Add zucchini, tomatoes with liquid, beef froth, cabbage, salt and pepper. Bring soup to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 1 hour. Add beans, cook another 20 minutes. Garnish with parsley if desired. Soup is even better the second day!

#cabbage #carrots #minestrone #tomato #beans #italian #creambased

Creamy Black Bean Chicken Soup

This soup is quite similar to the Slow Cooker Enchilada Soup that I posted about a few weeks ago (about which I’ve gotten great reviews – thanks, guys!), but it’s just different enough and just good enough that it’s worth sharing, too! We had this at Happy Hour last night and my Crockpot was scraped empty. A bonus is that it’s super easy and fast to throw together, especially if you use canned black beans.

I actually soaked my beans overnight and cooked them in the slow-cooker for a few hours in the morning before draining and adding the rest of the ingredients to the crockpot (soaking beans for 12-24 hours in water and lemon juice — about 1 T per cup of dry beans — helps with digestability and your body’s ability to absorb the nutritional content of the beans). If you’re out of your house all day, you could probably throw the soaked beans into the crockpot with other ingredients and about 2 cups of extra liquid. This soup would probably be extremely forgiving, as long as your beans and chicken are cooked, so feel free to throw it all in on high 3 hours before dinner or on low 9 hours beforehand… either way, I hope your family scrapes the bowl dry!

Creamy Black Bean Chicken Soup in the Slow-Cooker

(Recipe based on Pass the Fresh)

2 chicken breasts (frozen or thawed both work) 1 cup chicken broth (I used 1.5 c water and 1 t “Better than Bouillon”) 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed OR 1 cup dry black beans, soaked overnight and slightly pre-cooked 1 1/2 cup frozen corn 1 cup salsa (I used our family standard, Pioneer Woman’s recipe) 1 1/2 Tablespoons taco seasoning (make your own! Mine included smoked paprika, which added a great smoky flavor to the soup) 1/2 block (4 oz) cream cheese (the original recipe calls for sour cream and cheese, but I like the texture of cream cheese in soup, AND that’s what I had on hand)

Throw everything except the cream cheese into the slow cooker and cook on low 6-8 hours or on high 3-4 hours. In the last hour, remove and shred the chicken and add back in. Also, add the cream cheese in chunks and stir occasionally to make sure it is stirred in thoroughly. I served this with cilantro, diced jalapenos and tortilla chips, but you could also serve it with more sour cream, shredded cheese and diced fresh tomatoes. Yum!

#beans #chicken #crockpot #mexican #creambased

Sweet Potato and Lentil Chili

For our inaugural Happy Hour of the school year, I made this Sweet Potato and Lentil Chili. Honestly, I was looking for a recipe that would be cheap and low-maintenance, since I figured we’d be serving a bit of a crowd (I think we had 19 adults and a little under 10 kids show up). In terms of foods that are filling, cheap and healthy, you can’t go wrong with sweet potatoes and lentils (unless you’re paleo, but then you’re also not going to put sour cream and cheese on top of the finished recipe, and you also shouldn’t be complaining about free food and drinks at somebody else’s house. Fortunately for me, nobody complains… to me, anyway).

In fact, a lot of people really loved this soup! I liked it better the next day, but something might have been wrong with my tastebuds that day because I also thought my salsa (same recipe every week for 2+ years now) tasted funky and everyone else thought it was fine. In retrospect, I’d call it a win on all fronts.

(Also, if you are tripling the recipe like I did, feel free to use your food processor liberally in food prep. I had 6 bell peppers, 3 large onions and 9 sweet potatoes to dice. First of all, if you’re not cutting an onion like this, you are wasting a lot of time and you should give it a try. Secondly, I used the “slicer” attachment on my food processor for the bell peppers and the blade for the sweet potatoes — after I peeled them and cut them into large chunks, I filled the food processor bowl about 1/3 full and pulsed it until I got my desired texture, which was a lot of pieces the side of my onion chunks, some that were smaller, and a few large chunks. I still spent about an hour in front of the food processor but if I’d been doing it by hand, it would have taken me all day.)

Sweet Potato and Lentil Chili (original recipe here)

2 Tablespoons olive oil 1 onion, diced 2 bell peppers (any color), diced 3 medium sweet potatoes, diced 3 cloves garlic, minced 4 c vegetable broth (this makes the recipe vegan; I used beef “better than bouillon”) 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes with chiles (Ro-tel cans are 11 oz; I try to used canned tomatoes that are BPA free, Muir Glen organics is the brand I can get easily in Billings) 1 c lentils, rinsed 2 Tablespoons chili powder 1 Tablespoon cumin 1 Tablespoon paprika 1/4 teaspoon cayenne (optional) 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce salt & pepper, to taste

In a large pot, saute onion and bell peppers in olive oil until they are tender. Add garlic and sweet potatoes and saute until garlic is soft. Add everything except the lentils, bring to a boil and simmer until the sweet potatoes are tender (at least half an hour). Add lentils and cook until they are soft (another 20 min or so). It’s okay to cook longer – lentils don’t tend to get too mushy easily.

Serve with sour cream, shredded cheese, tortilla chips, cilantro, extra hot sauce and other garnishes of choice!