Fifty Soups - Black & White Bean Soup

Today marked the fiftieth Sunday Soup. So the question becomes, do we "celebrate" one year the week we reach 52, or is the anniversary the first weekend in May since our first one was the first Sunday in May? I'm kind of voting for a celebration of sorts in May because I'm on a big deadline for my book. I have to turn in this round of edits by April 30th. We'll be lucky to get soup for Week 52 at all! Maybe The Southerner will make it.

Today, to help me out, The Southerner did make corn bread. The soup was Black & White Bean Soup. I made it up, so I think I'll include the recipe here so that I have a record of it. You might want to try it too. It's yummy. This makes close to 9 quarts, so make sure you have a lot of hungry people.

4 stalks of celery - diced small
4 carrots - diced small
1 onion - diced small
6 quarts of light coloured vegetable stock
3 cups dried white beans - around 6 cups cooked
2 cups dried black beans - around 4 cups cooked
Thyme
Rosemary
Butter
Olive oil
salt & pepper

To make a light vegetable stock, I just used carrot peelings, onions ends and peelings, and a bit of celery, water, salt. Bring to a boil, simmer 20 minutes or so. Strain.

In a large pan, saute for just a few minutes carrots, celery, and onion in some olive oil and a glob of butter. Season with rosemary and thyme, s&p. You want your vegetables to still be quite firm so they don't turn to mush in your soup. Set aside.

Add about half of the WHITE beans to the stock, puree with a hand blender. You can skip this step if you want, but it thickens it just a little bit, which is nice. Then add the rest of the WHITE beans and the veggies. Simmer until the veggies are cooked through.

Rinse the cooked black beans really well. The water should run clear. If you skip the rinse, your soup will turn blue-ish-purple-ish and your white beans will turn grey. Blech! Add them to the soup. Season with salt & pepper and yummm..you're done!

I made a lot of soup because of how we emptied the pot last week. We had eight people, including two new-to-the-island people. We made a pretty serious dent in it, but there's still some left. I think this might be one of my more favourite soups. I like how light it is, but the beans give it a bit of body.

The Fleece Lady brought my favourite raw vegetable dip AND she brought some just to put in my fridge for us for later! Yippee! Score! In fact, The Fleece Lady and The Fix-it Guy had us over for breakfast this morning, so we ate very well today. We did learn one important lesson though...if you're going to someone's house for breakfast on a Sunday, you should probably clean the house on Saturday. When we got home well after noon, we had to scurry. Thank goodness The Southerner could also go by the nickname, Cleans Fast Under Pressure. Of course, he's a guy...it's probably in his genes! I guess that means my alternate nickname is Lucky Girl.

Until next week...Eat Well!

P.S. I finally moved the old live journal blog over to this blog, so the entire year is here for your entertainment. I will be posting a list of the entire year in soup pretty soon too.