Change of Plans

We had planned to go to Addie’s game, then all go out to eat but Vince has felt bad for a couple of days. I woke up with a headache so we didn’t go to the game. In fact, I went back to bed about 10 and slept til 1. I looked at the clock without my glasses and kept trying to convince myself it was 11 instead of 1. I can’t believe I took a 3 hour nap.

I had also planned to use some of my fresh made lard and make a pie crust and a pear pie today so that isn’t happening. I’m thankful for the leftover soup from yesterday.

I keep a container in the freezer and I dump all our leftover veggies in it. Since we started working with a naturopath, we’ve been eating beans every day, as well as hulled barley almost every morning for breakfast.

On Monday, I’ll usually add 1 cup of dry beans to two Instant Pots. The beans we use most often are black beans, pinto beans, small red beans, cannellini beans or black eyed peas. Sometimes it’s baby limas, garbanzo, adzuki or cranberry. I love cranberry and anasazi beans. On Monday, we may have black beans. On Tuesday, we may have pinto beans, then on Wednesday, black beans again and on Thursday, pinto beans again. Sometimes on Friday, I’ll mix whatever is leftover and we’ll have that or I’ll dump whatever is left of both in the freezer container. Then on Saturday, I may cook cannellini beans and on Sunday, cook black eyed peas . . and so it goes. Vince loves cannellini beans and is sure he would like to have them every day. I’m that way with small red, pinto and anasazi beans.

This all means that our soup has lots of beans but a good bit of corn, green beans and some green peas. Right at the end of cooking, I’ll add a few pods of freeze dried whole okra. Anything else that’s in the fridge that needs to be used gets added. This week, it was mushrooms. Sometimes it may be zucchini, cabbage, broccoli (there was broccoli in this week’s soup), kale – really whatever is in the fridge needing to be used.

For meat, this week I had leftover roast beef, leftover steak, leftover chicken fried steak, one grilled chicken breast and I added 1 pint of canned ground beef. Soup is always a surprise at our house. 🙂

When I started making this soup, it quickly outgrew my pot so I scooped out half of it, put it in a container and put it in the freezer. It’s labeled “soup base – not finished” (or something like that – can’t even remember). Then I finished the soup, we ate it last night, I put 1 quart jar and 1 pint jar in the fridge and froze the rest.