Get creative with what you have

These days my cooking philosophy is to get creative with what I have in my kitchen. I started the new year with loaded potato soup, courtesy of the bounteous crop of potatoes that survived last year’s drought. A few days later, I looked at the sweet potatoes we harvested and tried glazed sweet potato wedges. They were delicious.

I also experimented with a new recipe for asparagus dip that called for a couple of tomatoes. Instead of buying the weak-looking tomatoes that we find in the grocery store in the winter, I opened a jar of our canned tomatoes and used a couple of those. The taste was delicious but I have to say the color of the dip that was made from a green vegetable, a red fruit and white sour cream did not appeal to the eye. In my kitchen, not every recipe works out as expected.

For me, one of the joys of gardening is that when I’m using what I raised, I don’t mind creating something new even though I don’t know if it will turn out. There’s less pressure when I’ve harvested the ingredients from my garden rather than spent a small fortune on them in the grocery store.

Yesterday I looked at the glass jars of dried beans on my counter and decided it was time for bean soup. One of the pleasures of raising pole beans is that you can let them dry on the vine then shuck and store them to cook on a cold day. I combined greasy beans (an eastern Kentucky specialty that’s delicious and meaty when fresh) with some kind of brown beans I grew. I suspect they were dark, pinto beans but since I didn’t label them, I wasn’t sure. Nonetheless, I liked the way they contrasted with the white beans. Then I found a jar of Adzuki beans that I brought several years ago and poured them in, not sure how long it might take those older beans to cook. How long it takes beans to cook generally depends on their age.

I soaked them overnight with baking soda then cooked them in the One Pot the next day. I then added them to other ingredients in a pot on the stove to simmer. I also made corn bread, sweetened with local sorghum. That was a good meal for a cold evening!

If you have a favorite winter soup recipe, please share it. In the meantime, here’s my general version of the recipe.

Winter Bean Soup

3 – 4 cups of a variety of dry beans

1 ½ teaspoons of Better than Bouillon Roasted Garlic

1 chopped onion

2 chopped garlic cloves

1 pint of canned tomatoes with juice

Step 1: Soak the beans overnight in water with a little baking soda sprinkled in.

Step 2: Add soaked beans to pressure cooker or soup pot. Cover with 1 – 2 inches of water. Add garlic bouillon. Cook until beans are soft.

Step 3: Add olive oil to soup pot. Saute onions until almost soft. Add garlic and saute another two minutes or so. Don’t let garlic burn.

Step 4: Crush tomatoes with your hands and drop into soup pot. Add tomato juice from the jar or can. Cook the mixture for five minutes or so, until it has created a thick soup base.

Step 5: Remove some of the excess liquid from the beans and set aside to use later if needed. Add the rest of the liquid and beans to the soup pot. Bring to simmer and cook for 20 minutes or more. If the mixture is too thick, add some of the excess liquid to the pot.

Step 6: Taste for seasonings. We found that with the bouillon and canned tomatoes, we didn’t need to add salt.

Step 7: Serve with corn bread and enjoy!