White Bean and Vegetable Soup with Morels in a Tomato Base

Like most weekends we had a mid-day meal with my elderly omni parents today. This situation always pushes my culinary limits. It is not easy to make a healthy whole food plant based vegan meal that unhealthy omnivores will also enjoy. I rely on soups and salads often since those are healthy dishes that we can all agree on.

In keeping with the new information from the cancer lecture yesterday I have included mushrooms in our soup today. I did not list morels in the post yesterday but the message was that all mushrooms are protective but some maybe more than others. Since Dan loves morels, and we always have multiple packages in the pantry I though why not use those today.

In order to increase the nutrition in this soup I added a little turmeric. This is something I do often. I start with ¼ teaspoon stir it in, taste and keep adding until I can detect a hint of turmeric. Then I add a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper since the piperine in the pepper makes the turmeric more bioavailable. This is just one of my “tricks” to enhance the nutrition of our food. Here is the soup I made:

White Bean and Vegetable Soup with Morels in a Tomato Base
Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 cup dried white beans, presoaked and cooked until tender
½ ounce package dried morel mushrooms
2 cups water
28 ounces diced tomatoes, no salt
1 onion, peeled and finely diced (allow to stand 10 minutes before heating)
5 cloves garlic, peeled and finely diced (allow to stand 10 minutes before heating)
2 carrots, finely diced
3 stalks celery, finely diced
¼ cup nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
½ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
¼ teaspoon paprika
water to cover the soup ingredients by about ½ inch
4 cups finely shredded cabbage
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
sea salt and pepper, to taste (if desired)

Directions:

While the beans are cooking combine the dried mushrooms and water and microwave until the water just begins to boil. Allow the mushrooms to soak for 30 minutes so they soften completely.

Combine the beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrot, celery, spices and water and simmer over low heat. When the mushrooms are soft cut them into thin rings. Pour the mushroom soaking liquid through a fine wire strainer lined with a few layers of cheesecloth or a damp paper towel. Place this strained mushroom liquid into your soup pot.

During the last 30 minutes of cooking add the cabbage to the pot. You want it to be just tender, but not mushy.

Just before serving add the wine vinegar and stir to distribute. Taste the soup for seasonings and adjust to your taste.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 208.59
Calories From Fat (4%) - 8.89

Total Fat - 0.95g
Saturated Fat - 0.22g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 73.05mg
Potassium - 1091.17mg
Total Carbohydrates - 37.4g
Fiber - 11.53g
Sugar - 10.06g
Protein - 9.89g

Comments:

While this isn’t something that you would think of as a summer dish it works if you are in the air conditioning. I was careful to not add too much turmeric and make the soup bitter. It did add a light yellow color to the beans. Paprika was added to tone down yellow color and that seemed to work well. Nutritional yeast was added until I could taste a little umami in the broth that reminds me of butter. If you add more the taste seems to go from butter to cheese, in my opinion. With this soup I wanted to stop with the note of butter.

What I liked is the soup was healthy, filling and didn’t require a lot of attention from me while it cooked. It is also nice to have some leftover for tomorrow. One of the benefits of making a pot of soup is that it always lasts more than one meal. Nothing like double duty cooking I always say.

To start the meal we had a simple salad of shredded romaine, shredded red cabbage, cucumber, shredded carrot, salsa, avocado and sun flower seeds. This was the first time I tried the concept of using salsa as salad dressing on my parents. Much to my surprise they both ate their entire salad and said it was good. I mention this for those of you that haven’t tried salsa as dressing. We think it works well, and it even gets the omni seal of approval. I will say I think adding the avocado helped the omnivores enjoy the salad more. ;-)

Unrelated note:

Sorry I bailed on Fun Facts Friday. Yesterday was far too busy at our house. I was lucky to accomplish half of my to-do list. Today has been a little more mellow, thankfully. Dan is still swamped at work but at least he is working from home, which is much better.

Yesterday I spent a bit of time on the phone with a friend talking about my favorite subject, nutrition. She asked me many questions about food and it gave me some good ideas for posts. I have decided to write a series of posts called “what is the matter with …..”. In those posts I will select one food and write about what I learned about the issues or concerns are about consuming that particular food. I thought some of you may find it interesting and other would enjoy reading the studies that I thought were noteworthy. Those posts are going to take me much longer to write with links to the studies since I will need to go back and find some of the studies again. I am mentioning this because if anyone is interesting in the science behind the health problems with a particular food let me know and I will add it to my list of topics.

Once I finish the series on which foods are to be avoided I may do another series on the foods we should all be eating and why. Whether I do that or not will depend on how long the first series takes to write and document. I would love to hear if you think this is a good idea or not. Please let me know.

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. I will chat with you all again soon, either tonight or tomorrow.