Greens and Beans Soup

With the New York City Marathon officially one month away, I’m starting to hope that eating really well will be able to help make up for lack of training, even if ever so slightly. It works that way, right? Maybe if I believe it enough, it will be so.

We’ve been trying to eat less meat in general, and I’ve been trying to cook on the cheap, and since it feels like winter out, a simple soup came out of a few pantry ingredients along with some fresh additions.

I started this soup by adding a chopped onion, a bunch of garlic, and a big bowl of beautiful kale to some olive oil in my treasured Le Creuset French oven which will soon be two years old. I love how kitchen memories sometimes spark life memories. Two years ago, I had quit my full time job, was really, really, sick, and was cooking up this delicious pork dish in my new cookware. It’s been quite the two years. . . and I having a really good memory is a blessing a curse.

Back to the soup!

I let the kale cook down a little bit before adding a can of stewed tomatoes, using my vegetable scissors to chop the tomatoes into smaller pieces.

I drained a can of white beans and added them in.

Then I poured in enough veggie broth to cover everything.

To season the soup, I added two heaping tablespoons of Pastene pesto. I am not generally a fan of jarred pesto; fresh pesto is SO good. But Pastene makes great products and I thought I would give this one a try. It’s quite good, especially on toast with olive oil, which we had alongside the soup. I am embracing my emerging carb monster!

I let the soup simmer for about 20 minutes, then turned the heat off until we were ready to eat. At that point all of the flavors had combined nicely, and the kale was perfectly soft but not mushy.

The soup, along with pesto toast, made for a delicious and simple dinner. My favorite thing about a soup like this is how versatile it is. Add some chicken sausage, small pasta, rice, other veggies, really whatever you have on hand. Recipes like this make for great leftovers and take some of the thought out of lunches during the week.

Is it the weekend yet?