Song Of Soup

I am blessed to have several interests that give me great pleasure (told you about the knitting yesterday.) I also spend a good bit of my time with assorted music activities—much of it with my ukulele band. I have gathered many friends with each of these interests. I have knitting friends scattered across the country and I have many ukulele friends from coast to coast and even in Canada.

I also love to cook. Sometimes it is just a necessity beacause we have to eat and sometimes I feel totally creative when I'm in the kitchen. Anyway, a few days ago I saw a YouTube post from a ukulele friend. Complete with recipe. I love it when my interests happily collide.

Now, I have recipes I've collected that were jotted on a napkin or the back of an envelope. Recipes that were ripped out of the news paper and magazines. And there are about a zillion recipes pinned on my Pinterest boards. But I've never had a musical recipe. Until now.



I made UkesterBrown's soup this week and thought it was good enough to share here. We've been trying to focus on fresh foods here and step away from processed foods and ingredients you can't pronounce. But canned vegetables usually don't have many of those "big word" ingredients. Most times it's just a vegetable, water and salt. The salt/sodium can be a concern, so we look for low-sodium or no-salt-added products on the grocery shelf.

For a recipe that mostly involves dumping cans into a pot, this was pretty good. There are days when you have time to really cook. And there are days when you need a recipe like this. We put two quarts into the freezer for later.

UkesterBrown said it's the fresh cilantro that "makes" this recipe. But we live in a cilantro-free zone here. Daddy-O cannot abide it. (Have you heard about genetic reason for this?) So I just left that out and figured topping the soup with a little cheese and sour cream would make up the difference. It worked for us.

I used one can of mild Rotel tomatoes and one can of original Rotel. It's was pretty zingy! So pick your Rotel to suit your taste. Here is UkesterBrown's recipe:

BLACK BEAN SOUP 

2 tablespoons oil

½ cup diced carrots

½ diced celery

½ diced onion

2 (10-oz) cans diced tomatoes w/ green chilies

3 (15-oz) cans black beans (I used low-sodium)

1 (11-oz) can Mexican style corn

¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro 

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in soup pot and then add 1/2 cup carrots, 1/2 cup celery and 1/2 cup onion. Cook about 15 minutes or until tender.

Add diced tomatoes with green chiles, black beans, Mexican-style corn. Don't drain anything.

Bring to a boil and then let simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add 1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro and serve. 


One member (she's a whistler, too) of our ukulele band saw this recipe and told me she had a wonderful black bean soup that used dried black beans and ham. I will see if she'll share her recipe. And on a day when I have more time, I'll try hers, too.