Black Bean Vegetable Soup

It's harvesting time!  We've been out picking and gathering all of the tasty homegrown goodness from our garden lately and so I've also been adding more vegetables to our meals!  We've had quite the abundance of zucchini and green beans and we've been eating and freezing everything we get( mostly eating!).

Last week, I was in the mood for soup.  My husband is not a big fan of soup as he is a born and bred meat and potatoes type of fellow so I don't prepare any kind of soup besides chili very often.  It's been a few months, so I thought I'd try my hand at vegetable soup since I had a large drawer full of fresh veggies right there in my fridge!


I was slightly scared of attempting this even though vegetable soup seems rather easy.  Once when I was a child, my mother prepared homemade veggie soup.  She served me first and I took a bite.  Let's just say that I was not at all enthusiastic about the taste.  We were rather poor growing up, so dinner was dinner.  No short order cooking around there!  I tried to take another bite, but it was really that, um....unappetizing.  I told my mother as she stood at the counter dishing out her own bowl of soup that I didn't care for the meal and she, in motherly fashion, told me to stop being picky and to eat my dinner.

I couldn't do it.

Really.

Truly.

It was gross.

So I just sort of stirred my spoon around in my bowl trying to figure out a way to get out of eating this soup.  Finally, my mother sat down and tasted hers.

She immediately spit hers back out.

Thank goodness!

I was right.  Neither of us were sure exactly what had gone wrong in the preparation of that day's evening meal, but we DID know that it wasn't edible.

My mom decided to give our dog an, ahem, treat and filled his bowl with the soup.

The dog took a bite and walked away.

I'm not kidding.  The dog wouldn't even eat the soup!

Suffice it to say, my mother never attempted to make vegetable soup again.  We do have a good laugh at the story from time to time though. :)

That experience has always intimidated me whenever I thought about testing out the veggie soup staple.  After all, I'm only domestic engineer in training and I'm so far from an expert when it comes to meal planning and prep.  But, I really wanted to use some of our harvested goods so I rolled up my sleeves, scoured the internet and found a recipe that I though would please our palettes.  Here is my modification of the original recipe.

What You'll Need

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cups chicken broth
1 onion, chopped or dried minced onion to taste
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 carrots, chopped
1-2 zucchinis(depending on their size), chopped
2 teaspoons chili powder
1-2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 cans of black beans, rinsed and drained
1-1 1/2 cups frozen corn
1 16 oz can tomato sauce
pepper to taste
shredded colby jack cheese


First, warm the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.  .When it's ready, add the onion, garlic, zucchini and carrots. Saute until the onion is tender. 

Then add the cumin and chili powder and stir until fragrant.

Add the chicken broth, ONE can of black beans, the corn and the pepper.  Bring to a boil.

In the meantime, puree the other can of black beans and your tomato sauce in a food processor until thoroughly mixed.

Add that mixture to the pot and cook until the carrots and zucchini are tender.

Sprinkle with cheese and serve with tortilla chips(my husband also added sour cream).

This soup was delicious( I was so relieved!)!  Even my I-won't-touch-it-if-it-even-resembles-a-vegetable four year old ate his entire bowl!

If we had a dog, we would NOT be sharing! ;)

How do you prepare your vegetable soup?

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Made from Scratch Tuesday, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Scrumptious Sunday, Mix it Up Monday, Domestically Divine Tuesdays, Consider the Lilies Homemaking Link Up, Teach Me Tuesdays, and Raising Homemakers.