Saturday, January 26, 2008

Min's Pantry Fiesta Soup!


"Only the pure of heart can make good soup."

-Beethoven, 1842


I have that quote hanging above my stove top, I just love it. It reminds me of myself. You know, pure, driven snow, wait. Why do I hear laughter? Anyway, it's a good quote. And I do make good soup. No matter the level of pureness...oh, who am I kidding. Never mind.

Tonight, I didn't have any dinner planned for various reasons. One, I have been working on perfecting my 2009 calendar, which I am proud to announce will soon be available for purchase on my blogs! Exciting! But time-consuming.

So when it was after 5pm, and there was no dinner on the horizon, I decided on soup. I asked Number One "Mexican or Asian?" and he chose Mexican. So I ran with it.

I grabbed some chicken thighs from the freezer, thawed them briefly in the microwave, then diced them. I melted butter in a dutch oven pan and added the chicken.

While the chicken was thawing/cooking, I sliced half an onion and a few cloves of garlic. Put those in the pan with the chicken and butter.

From the pantry, I grabbed a can of pinto beans and a can of diced tomatoes. Drained them, added them to the pan. I added about six cups of water, and six chicken bouillon cubes because we have no chicken broth in the pantry.

From the freezer, I added what we had leftover of a bag of frozen corn and some frozen broccoli. (broccoli is not quite Mexican, but it needed some color) For flavor and spice, I added some lime juice (probably almost 1/4 cup of ReaLime), cumin, oregano and marjoram. And salt. I heated it all through, and that was that.

In about 30 minutes, a delicious Mexican-inspired soup. Served with corn chips on top. It would also be good with fresh avocado on top. And perfect with fresh diced tomato on top instead of canned diced tomato in the soup, but as much as I'm wishing for it, it's not summertime yet.

1 comment:

Min said...

We had some of this soup leftover, but a lot of the "stuff" was gone, so last night I added two more cups of water, two cubes of bouillon, and some egg noodles. Still had good flavor, didn't need any extra spices. Yum!

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