Vegetable Soup with Great Northern Beans

It’s gonna be a busy week. No way around it. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I am busy from morning till night. I have to be careful that I don’t get tired and hungry and decide to go to a restaurant for a good meal that is expensive and takes up too much time.

I’ll make some soup to put into a thermos. Also during the week, I’ll pack some almonds and walnuts with raisins along with hard-boiled eggs and apples to munch on during the day. Sundays are a great day to make soup. A little work yes, but also restful on that day of rest.


Vegetable Soup with Great Northern Beans

Wash a bag of beans, put them in a pot, cover with water, and bring to boil for a minute. Let them stand for an hour while the stock simmers.

The Stock: Get a pot. Throw a chicken carcass in it carved down to the bone with an onion, carrots, celery, garlic, parsley stems, whatever; I’ll even throw in apple cores. Fill the pot with water covering everything, bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for an hour.

Ingredients for stock and soup


Drain the stock through a colander into the pot of beans. Bring all to a boil and then set to a simmer for about half an hour.

Add chopped onions, celery, and carrots to the simmering beans. It should take the beans about half an hour to become eatable. I like em a little al dente.

Simmering the stock


About 15 minutes before I turned this particular soup off, I added some sweet potatoes. They cook fast, about 10 minutes. So I always put potatoes in at that last, and of course sweet potatoes cook twice as fast as white. I added chopped parsley about 5 minutes before the end so it let off its flavor but stayed a nice green for the first bowl of soup anyway.

Simmering the soup

I added lots of dry herbs to the soup, thyme, basil and black pepper. Almost no salt. For a lovely flavor, you could squeeze some fresh lemon (or lime) on the soup before eating.

And honestly, the soup ought to be so good and fresh that you won’t get tired of it before the week is out.

For today and the week

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