‘Tis the Season for Homemade Soup!

With the Autumn change to cooler weather and shorter days, I always get a hankering to make soup.  No, not from the can that I usually eat most of the year, but good old-fashioned made-from-scratch soup.  I especially like the heartier bean and legume varieties.   There is just something so satisfying about the process of  washing and soaking the dried beans, then adding all the ingredients and letting it simmer on the stove for hours.

Yesterday was a good crisp soup-making kind of day, so I decided to make split pea soup.  It only took about an hour to cook, maybe because the peas are small.  Anyhow, I was totally amazed at how such a relatively small package of dried peas could make a huge vat of soup.  It turned out really well; even my picky teenage son thought it smelled good while cooking and devoured a huge bowlful!  This always warms my heart.

My tried and true handmade soup is the 15-Bean variety.  This incredible soup absolutely defies any law of physics.  It expands to an immense amount after soaking and cooking, and is the most filling soup you will ever want to eat.  The only problem is that it makes so much!  I end up eating it for weeks afterward and usually get very tired of eating it.  And really, 15 bean varieties?  To me, that is about 13 or 14 bean varieties too many!  I need to find a recipe for a delicious one or two bean soup.  A little bean goes a long way!

Homemade soups are hearty, wholesome, and cheap to make.  It  does take longer to cook, but nothing is more comfy than aromatic soup simmering on the stove on a cold day.  Soup’s on!

“Soup is a lot like a family. Each ingredient enhances the others; each batch has its own characteristics; and it needs time to simmer to reach full flavor.”  -Marge Kennedy

~Marilyn