Bean Soups For Our Snow Day Tomorrow?

According to the Weather Bureau we might have up to 4″ of snow here in Hotlanta tomorrow. If you’ve never been in the steamy, sultry south you might not appreciate how unusual that is or how much fun a snow day is here. When it’s wintry outside our thoughts turn to soup – especially my #1, absolutely, ‘most-favoritest’ – BEAN SOUPS!

<Soup has been a favorite with humanity since … well, probably since the discovery of fire. It’s filling, nutritious, delicious (or it can be) and it’s very forgiving. Clearly, some soups are better than others but it’s really hard to mess up a soup. Assuming your ingredients are fresh, the main way to ruin good soups, especially bean soup recipes, is to have little flavor. And that is definitely not one of my problems! :-)

Bean soup recipes are healthy because beans are loaded with:

1. Fiber
2. Protein
3. Vitamins
4. Minerals

In fact, it’s hard to beat the benefits of beans. What could be better than all that? Especially when it’s combined with good taste and gives us a nice warm tummy.

Here’s a lovely recipe. It calls for canned goodies because it’s winter and good produce [at least for bean soups] are harder to come by and certainly expensive. But fresh produce is even better, of course.

<Bean Soup Ingredients:

* 1, 26 ounce can of tomatoes, including the juice
* 1, 15 ounce can of beans – your choice of the kind of beans [my personal favorites are pintos]
* 1/2 cup of uncooked brown rice
* 1 cup of good water
* 2 large carrots cut in pieces or a handful of shredded carrots

Bean Soup Preparation:

+ Combine the water and tomatoes and bring to high heat.

+ Then add the rice and carrots, cover the pot and simmer on low for 20-30 minutes or until the vegetables are almost tender

+ Add the canned beans plus 1 1/2 teaspoons (or more) of cumin, 1 teaspoon of chili power and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer this mixture for about five minutes.

This yummy soup makes six servings that are about 180 calories each, with loads of fiber and virutally no fat and 6+ grams of protein.

No wonder bean soups are so popular. And this is just one version – there are a ton of bean soup recipes out there and I’ve tried dozens of them. More to come.