With the colder weather lately (it's been upper 60's here, brrr ;) ) I've begun craving soup. I made a huge batch of butternut squash soup with coconut milk over a week ago. But I want to share another soup I made the other day. I call it hurry-and-use-all-the-vegetables-before-we-get-another-CSA-bag soup. I guess it's technically minestrone though...


I started by soaking some "7 Bean Mix" from the bulk section, it's just seven different beans all mixed together, you could use any beans. I put a cup of the beans in two cups of water with about a tablespoon of vinegar in a bowl in the morning. There are many benefits to soaking your legumes and grains. I could go off on a long-winded tangent about it, but I am in the middle of a recipe. So instead I will just share this nice explanation with you. 


With about an hour before dinner, I began heating a large pot on medium. I added a nice heaping tablespoon of butter and about a pound of grass-fed ground beef and let it brown. While it was browning, I started roughly chopping garlic, carrots, bell peppers, and zucchini. When the beef was finished cooking, I added the garlic and let it heat up for about a minute. Then, I added some chicken stock to deglaze the pot and made sure there was enough to cover all my ingredients, you can add as much as you want depending on your preferences. Next, I drained my beans, gave them a rinse, and added them to the pot. I reduced the temperature to medium-low and let the soup simmer for about ten minutes. While tidying up the kitchen, I found an almost empty bag of pasta in the cupboard and decided to throw that into the pot. I added the carrots at this point because they take longer to get soft than the other vegetables, and let it simmer some more. About five minutes before I thought the soup was done, I added the bell peppers and zucchini. I added salt, pepper, cumin, and a little chili powder. 


It was very filling. I served it with a nice thick slice of bread and there was plenty left over to freeze for later. I look forward to defrosting it when these veggies' seasons are long past and remembering this bountiful time of year. 


If you decide to cook something like this, I encourage you to use whatever you have around and taste it many times throughout. Trust your taste buds and instincts!