Grocery Trip - Nani's Liberat-yum!

Black Bean Soup

Good morning on a bright and gorgeous Saturday! Yes, wake-up temperature was 36° but it’s SUNNY!!! Besides, tomorrow, Easter Sunday, it’s going to be 70-ish degrees and still sunny; perfect for a pastel dress and a new hat at church or coffee on the patio while munching the ears off a chocolate bunny.

Yeah, okay, sunshine just makes me happy. Moving right along…

At the end of last week I went grocery shopping! That may not sound like a big deal but I went grocery shopping by myself. I had my list, my coupons and three reusable shopping bags. The reusable shopping bags hold more than the little plastic grocery bags and there is a two-bag limit on the bus. I can put one bag around the head rest on the back of my chair in order to have three bags of groceries but only use floor space for two bags. I chose a time day when it would be a little less crowded at the store and was happy to find people were so helpful. A store employee swapped out full handbaskets for empty ones so I could get my shopping done – I can’t push a shopping cart from a wheelchair. I had no trouble finding employees that would grab things on the top shelves for me and in one instance a fellow shopper seemed almost honored when I asked if she would get a can of beans off a shelf that was out of my reach when there wasn’t an employee in that aisle. It was a good day. I got my three bags of groceries home and got them all put away before a well-earned cup of coffee and a donut.

At the beginning of this week I made a crock pot of black bean soup with the fruits from my shopping trip. I haven’t made black bean soup in a long time and golly it was SO GOOD! A 1 pound bag of black beans makes six servings. I have three left; one of the fringe and two in the freezer. I’m going to try not to thaw the container in the freezer for a couple of weeks but I haven’t made it in years and years and years and it’s really hard not to have it every day right now.

I use a slight variation of a recipe from “Fabulous Beans” by Barb Bloomfield, one of my favorite cookbooks, printed in 1994. It’s a great cookbook and in looking up the Amazon link I found “More Fabulous Beans” which is now on my Amazon Wish List!

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients:
1 lb dry black beans
8 cups water
1 chopped green pepper

1 TBS oregano
2 TBS cumin
1 TBS salt
6 TBS lemon juice

Soak the beans overnight with 2 TBS baking soda. (The soda will make the beans kinder to your stomach, sort of like adding preemptive Beano to the soup!)

Drain and rinse the beans and put in a crock pot with 8 cups of water and the chopped green pepper. Cook on high for a few hours until the beans are soft. Turning the crock pot on in the morning will make the beans ready for the finish when you get home from work.

To finish the soup, add the oregano, salt, cumin and lemon juice to the beans and cook in the crock pot for another 30 minutes. Purée a couple cups in a blender and return it to the beans to give the soup a creamy texture. Serve with a tablespoon of sour cream.

The recipe with the sour cream is only 6 WW points. :)

The “bookmark” made me smile. This recipe has been a favorite of mine for a long time. We used to do one “vegetarian night” a week when I worked at Omnicom cable just after trade school. I remember when I wrote the note to Mom because I was working until 6:30 and she got home around 5:30. She was adding the finishing ingredients so the soup would be ready when Pop got home. Back in the mid-90s my printing was legible too! I loved this soup and was excited to share it with my parents. I was pleased that they both liked it. When we did vegetarian night, Mom and I used to go vegetarian all day. Pop made sure he had lots of meat with lunch.