Recipe Taste Test: Bacon Chickpea Soup

I have a huge list of stored food items, and now am working on preparing the 365 days of menus and recipes to go with them.

Yesterday was Day 1 of creating and testing. I found a chickpea (garbanzo beans) soup recipe online and modified it to work with what we store. I soaked the beans the night before (did you know that they almost double in size and soak up almost all of the water?). At around 10:30 a.m., once I remembered to do the soup, I got busy. I drained and rinsed the soaked beans and added them to our huge crockpot with 10 cups of water, dried garlic/onion/soup veggies/carrots, bouillon, and olive oil. That cooked for several hours. I started a loaf of bread in the bread machine, and when it had an hour left, I added bacon to the soup. When the bread had 30 minutes left, I added some gluten-free rice pasta to the soup.

Dinner was delicious. Weslee didn't care for the veggies but actually ate the beans and pasta, and upon threat of no bread, finished off the broth and veggies. Doug had a taste-test-small-bowl then a big bowl with two pieces of bread. I had a big bowl with a piece bread and got full (if you knew me....)

There is still about 4 servings left - and it cost be only about $5.00 for the whole crockpot. We got a good dose of grain (pasta), protein (beans & bacon) and veggies, plus a bit of fat (oil and bacon). We'll post pictures of the meal when we get a chance.

We'll post the entire detailed recipe when we get to that day in 2009. We are also thinking about making a cookbook of how to use our stored foods - maybe calling it "Stored Foods Menus for 365 Days". Comments?

Weslee's requested homemade chicken noodle soup next. He wants to help figure out how to do it healthily, so this should be interesting, especially since he has always eaten canned soup. (I know, bad mommy).

We are also working on soups with black eyed peas, kidney beans, black beans, navy beans and split peas. We'd love to have suggestions! Then after we've come up with about 20 soups using our stored ingredients, we'll work on things like breads and muffins. After that, who knows?!?

Vikki (and Doug) - www.newviewgroupllc.com