black bean soup

I really like to cook and I only wish that I had more time to devote to it. I am always looking for new ideas for quick and easy and YUMMY meals. I don't really follow recipes very closely--I don't measure but instead eyeball amounts and I tend to use my own creative flair when it comes to using seasoning and spices. This is much like Rachael Ray, but I assure you that this is where the similarities end. I am not annoying and you will not (I hope!) want to punch me in the face.

During the week, our dinners consist mostly of a big mess of whatever we have in the house and that I can throw together. My standard practice is to come up with an idea, check allrecipes.com to make sure that how I'm thinking this through will actually work and then go to town. It can get interesting and some meals certainly work out better than others.

So anyway. On my drive home today, I was running through what we had on hand and what I could throw together. With the cooler weather settling in for the long haul, I've been craving soups and comfort foods.We always, always, always have black beans around (like, 10 cans at any given time), so black bean soup seemed like a good idea.

I got started with chopping onions, garlic and green peppers and it wasn't until I went to get the few cans of black beans from the pantry that the problem with the black bean soup developed. We had NO black beans. None. The family that usually has 10 cans at any given time was totally and completely black bean-less. You can't have much of a black bean soup without the black beans.

Luckily for me (and our dinner), Matt works late on Mondays and was able to stop at the store and pick up a few cans of beans. I threw them in the pot, let it simmer and the end result was delicious!

We topped it with sour cream and ate it with quesadillas and we totally ate in the living room in front of the TV. Hey, it's Monday Night Football and the Broncos are playing.

________________________________

The fast and loose version of what became our dinner (and lunch tomorrow):
1 green pepper
1/2 onion
Fresh garlic (is a clove the whole thing or one piece? I used a few pieces)
Black beans (I used 3 15oz cans. As luck would have it we were also out of cumin. So was the grocery store. So Matt bought the Cumin Black Beans. He's a thinker!)
Vegetable stock (you could use chicken if you were an omnivore) (I don't know how much I used. Less is more, you can always add to it.)
Jar of salsa
Sour cream for garnish (optional)

Chop green pepper, onion and garlic. Get out your big soup pot and pour a little bit of olive oil in the bottom. Throw in your veggies and cook for a few minutes at medium heat or until soft. Throw in two cans of black beans. Put the third can in the blender with the vegetable stock and puree to desired consistency. Pour this into the soup pot. Toss in the jar of salsa. Simmer until hot and delicious. Serve.

We easily could have used two cans of beans and still had plenty of soup. I like to have leftovers so that we can have it for lunch.

Matt really liked this. Any meal that I make that gets the Matt seal of approval is considered a success. I believe his exact words were "I like this. Please make it again.". And, for a family such as ours that ALWAYS has black beans around, this was super duper easy and quick.