Minestrone

This is a recipe I adapted loosely from American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldbeck. Very loosely...I added extra zucchini in place of potatoes, and used green beans instead of greens (no greens yet, but the CSA starts Thursday).

Minestrone

1/5 lb dry (1 cup cooked) kidney beans: 0.24

1/2 c dry (2 oz) macaroni: 0.09

1/2 of a 6 oz can tomato paste: 0.17

6 c. water

1 tsp dried basil: 0.05

1 tsp dried parsley: 0.03

1 clove garlic, pressed: 0.04

1/2 large onion, diced: 0.15

1/4 lb sliced frozen green beans (these were leftover): 0.25
2 carrots, diced: 0.17

1 tsp salt: 0.02

1 T canola oil: 0.04

2 small zucchini, diced: 0.85

2 celery stalks, diced: 0.20

1 T dried veggie stock powder: ?

Total: $2.40 for 12 cups, or eight 1.5 cup servings. $0.30 per serving.

Soak and pre-cook the kidney beans. Saute onion and garlic in oil until soft. Add herbs, carrots, water, and tomato paste. Cover and simmer for 20 min. Add remaining ingredients, cover and simmer 30 min.

This was really good. I made this yesterday alongside last night's dinner of Mediterranean chickpeas and rice. (I had the leftovers for lunch today with steamed broccoli and it was heaven). So I got two different meals in one cooking batch. And soup is always better the next day. We've got about 8 cups left, which will be dinner for toddler and I tomorrow (2 cups), and lunch for me Weds and Thurs (3 cups). The rest will probably go in the freezer. Or maybe we'll eat it Friday.

I served this with about 1T of parmesan per bowl (at 0.09), plus homemade rye and onion bread (0.08 per 2-oz slice). It's a recipe from the book that came with our bread machine. We discovered when we replaced our bread machine that the recipes don't necessarily translate from one to the other. We could fiddle, but don't. On the bread we had just some butter and some of the homemade caponata from New Year's Eve (from the freezer).