I wanted to make minestrone today, but I ended up making vegetable bean soup instead.
Ingredients:
1 qt. tomato juice (I used frozen fresh from the garden)
6 cups water (or thereabouts)
1/2 cup carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup green peppers, chopped (I used frozen from the garden)
1 cup leftover Christmas Lima beans (mine were already cooked, of course, but you could prepare them as you would to cook them, and then add them in.)
1 cup various other beans (I used frozen from the garden; not quite dried enough to be dried beans and I did not soak them beforehand.)
3 medium potatoes, cut up (I didn't peel them.)
2 cups frozen chopped spinach (This was the experiment, and it worked wonderfully.)
2 tsp. each dried rosemary, thyme, and basil or to taste. (Fresh: use quite a bit more, I'd think.)
3 tsp. chili powder (or more; the potatoes do soak up some of the flavor, so to taste.)
Put all ingredients into a 6 qt. crock pot (you can easily halve this recipe if needed) and cook on low for 6-8 hours or until beans and potatoes are done. On high, I'd say this should be done in 4-6 hours, easily.
The spinach really did it for this recipe. The spinach flavor complemented the other flavors, and really tied everything together. I'm really pleased with how this turned out.
I also made three seed bread to go with it--two loaves. YUM!
