Saturday, August 16, 2008

Daring to Give out a Recipe

I'm probably one of the last people on earth who should dare to give out a recipe. It's the sad and sorry truth. I usually opt for healthy ingredients over taste. I love eating tasty, wonderfully rich dishes at other people's houses, and at restaurants, but at home I stick to good nutrition, save for milk chocolate. I know about the anti-oxidants in dark chocolate (and I think in bittersweet too), but it's just not my favorite.

Anyhow, even culinary-compromised individuals like me sometimes come across a jewel of a recipe. This bean soup is fool-proof delicious. Restaurant quality, for sure. It's from the Saving Dinner book by Leanne Ely, Host of SavingDinner.com. All her recipes are quite healthy, and many are very tasty as well.

Now, if you know of a good cornbread recipe, either from scratch, or that you've found in a box, I would love for you to share it. I love making soups and always want to serve tasty cornbread to accompany many of them, but I've had no luck in finding a good recipe.

It's a little early for bean soup, I know. We have deciduous leaves here already changing colors, so I had the urge to make it.


Crock Navy Bean Soup

1 pound dried navy beans, rinsed and drained
6 cups chicken broth (low salt is better if you plan to add ham)
1 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1/2 bay leaf

Later add:
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
Salt and pepper to taste

In a Crock-Pot, combine the first six ingredients. Cook on high for 1 hour, turn it down to low and cook for 8-10 hours.

When beans are tender, add tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste.

Per serving:
231 calories, 2 grams fat (without ham), 17 grams protein, 38 grams carb, 14 grams dietary fiber, o mg cholesterol, 587 mg sodium

Exchanges: 2.5 grain, 1 lean meat, .5 vegetable

Enjoy!

2 comments:

Susher said...

Hello, I found your blog by surfing around a little after checking in on how Baby Noah is doing. I think that family has SO many people praying for them.

Anyway, I looked at some of your past blogs, and took an interest in your assessment of John McCain cheating on his first wife. While cheating is definitely a sin, and no matter why it happens it still boils down to a personal decision and personal responsibility, I sometimes think our hearts can get a bit hardened to the human element that may sometimes play a part. In McCains case, I wonder if some of the struggles in his life that led to his infidelity and bad choices may have been as a result of some pretty significant emotional trauma. His infidelity occurred after he had been a POW. Here is a man who suffered years of indescribable torture and emotional suffering. I'm sure that our minds cannot even grasp what it was like, or what resources he had to call upon to just survive and to come out even moderatly intact emotionally. Now take a man who has been through hell and drop him right back into a marriage. I doubt that we can even begin to comprehend the potential pitfalls and struggles that couple must have endured when he got home. Television and movies would like us to believe it is all a happy, easy reunion. But that is far from the truth. Perhaps McCain was far from healed emotionally when he made the horrible decision to be unfaithful. Perhaps his spirit was still so hurting and broken that he sought comfort and/or understanding at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Perhaps current day finds him to be far from the broken and damaged man he was back then. I just ask that people look deeper into their hearts, show grace and mercy, and try to understand what horrible and significant circumstances can do to decent people, if only for a season. I think he is a decent man who lost his way. Something tells my heart that he has found it again.

Christine said...

Thanks for pointing out that I need to extent grace on this issue. I grew up in a family ravaged by this sin, so it's one that I have a really hard time with. I hope you're right that John McCain has found the path of truth. I would like to see more evidence of his faith.