I love snowmen. My best friend knows this, so my homemade Christmas gift from her this year was topped with some snowman fabric. I don't have a picture of the whole thing because by the time I remember to take a picture, the contents were looking something like this:
At least I got the picture while the peas and lentils were still colorful, right?
The gift, if you haven't already guessed, was a 12 bean (ish, I didn't count...maybe she will chime in and tell me) soup. It was packaged all pretty, like when you make those layered sand creations, when you're a kid, at craft fairs and stuff. Or maybe that's just me? I dunno.
You may have seen me commenting on others' blogs with soup lust recently, and since today was all cold and snowy I thought it was the perfect day to utilize my Christmas gift. I quick soaked them, which I've never done before, I usually soak overnight. I think it worked well for this because of the different beans. So, they boiled for two minutes, then were covered and soaked for an hour. Then drained the soaking water, and added them to 6 cups of water, 1 can of diced tomatoes, vegetable bouillon, and a bay leaf, then simmered it for an hour.
Zoe says: stop taking my picture and go read your stupid book
The stupid book is Twlight...the third one, Eclipse, which came into the library for me today!
Anyway, after it simmered for about an hour, I needed to add another 2 cups of water. Half an hour after that I added a bunch of spices. I wanted so badly to make it spicy (cumin, chili powder, etc), but I always do that. So I tried to keep it more Italian. So, I added dried basil, oregano, parsley, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, crushed red pepper, 1/4 cup nutritional yeast, and salt to taste. It cooked for about 20-25 minutes after that, until it started sticking to the bottom of the pot a little.
Okay, this picture doesn't really do it justice, but this was my brother's bowl and he was hungry, so I only got one shot, haha.
Serves 5
Nutrition Information: 204.0 Calories; 1.1g Total Fat; 0.3 Saturated Fat; 0.0mg Cholesterol; 35.5g Carbohydrates; 10.7g Fiber; 15.2g Protein.
**I'm not sure how accurate that is. It was kind of hard to get accurate nutrition information for each kind of dried bean, plus I didn't know exactly how much there was of each kind because I didn't make it. Should be close enough though.
It came out really good. I love how the lentils and split peas are pretty much mush and make the soup nice and thick while the bigger beans stay in tact. My brother really liked it, he had seconds. In fact he told me multiple times that he really liked it. Also, it was awesome that everything was from the pantry, which can definitely be a good thing sometimes.
Gotta love Christmas presents that feed you! Now if only I had some Christmas cookies left...
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