VeganMOFO2011

Navy Bean Soup – healthy, but unremarkable

TGO is an organised and thrifty soul who likes to prepare a week’s worth of lunches on a Sunday afternoon. This week, he chose Navy Bean Soup as the first dish to try from The Natural Vegan Kitchen, by Christine Waltermyer. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of dish that makes you feel worthy for eating it, rather than excited.

The basic rundown of the recipe is:
• Cook carrot, celery, onion, garlic and oregano in a mix of water and oil
• Add vegetable broth (TGO used just water as is his usual way in cooking soups), navy beans (TGO used kidney beans as he didn’t manage to find navy beans at the store) and a bay leaf, and cover to simmer.
• The final step is to add kale (again, TGO was unsuccessful in finding kale but substituted another dark leafy green), diluted white miso, and liquid to desired consistency, and once more cover to simmer.

Navy_bean_soup_leafy_greensOur kale replacement – so vibrant!

TGO had trebled the recipe to make sufficient for his lunches, and there was enough leftover for at least a meal each as well. However, neither of us were greatly impressed with the final result.

I don’t think that swapping the beans or the leafy greens made an impact on the dish, but I would definitely have preferred it with vegetable broth instead of water to give it a bit more oomph. As it was, I added some trusty Herbamare seasoning salt to make my serving more palatable. There certainly wasn’t anything actively unpleasant about the taste, it was just a tad bland. As the heading indicates: healthy, but unremarkable.

Navy_bean_soupMeh…

There are three other dishes in this cookbook that TGO is wanting to try out in the near future: Moroccan Vegetable Stew over Couscous, Fettuccine with Chickpeas, Corn and Kale, and Glazed Brussels Sprouts and Chestnuts. The first two sound pretty good to me but I’m a bit dubious about that last one!

Incidentally, it’s only when typing out that last paragraph that I ever noticed the ‘s’ on the end of ‘Brussels’… I’ve always thought of them as simply “brussel sprouts”. I love learning things like this! Interestingly, this page acknowledges both spelling options, and then swaps back and forth between the two within the one page!

 

 

 

VeganMOFOlogoI’m taking part in October’s Vegan Month of Food, along with 700 other bloggers! Check out the blogroll for extensive inspiration!

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