Minestrone

Here’s how I roll: If we have something completely healthy for dinner, like minestrone, then I get to load up our salad with lots of blue cheese and cashews. Not a bad trade off really, because I love minestrone.

Plus, we always have crusty bread with minestrone, which I also love. In fact, Don said he married me in part because he had never met anyone who loved good bread as much as he did. (I try not to be like my grandmother and load on two inches of butter on the bread—I limit myself to only ½ inch for sure.)

If it doesn’t have zucchini, I call it vegetable soup and not minestrone. I also must have a bit of spinach in minestrone. Frozen spinach is something that is always in my freezer. Last night I used a small bit of spinach that had already been thawed and squeezed out, so I could just plunk it directly into the soup. If that small bit hadn’t been there, I would have gone ahead and microwaved a whole package, used a bit and put the rest back into the freezer for the next batch of soup or quiche.

In my mind, minestrone used to mean soup with those cute, small pasta shells. They were great the first day, but if I had any leftovers, the shells expanded and weren’t so cute anymore. These days, I skip them altogether.

Lately, my minestrone cooks with Parmesan rinds, which add a bit of je ne sais quoi (as well as teeny bits of tasty Parmesan) to the soup. I always mean to make minestrone into soupe au pistou, but  fresh basil is never in my fridge and I never seem to want to take the time to  add minced garlic at the end—next time I think I will.

Here’s my recipe:

Sauté ½ chopped onion. Add 2 to 3 cloves of garlic and sauté another ½ minute.

Add one can of chopped tomatoes, some vegetable or chicken stock (about 2 cans or one foil package). Let the mixture simmer for ½ hour or more.

Add 1 can of Great Northern or Navy beans, 1 zucchini, some frozen spinach and a small amount of any other left-over vegetables you feel like tossing in (I especiallyt like green beans in minestrone, but last night, I added about ¼ cup of canned corn that was still around from the sloppy joes a few days ago).

Cook just until the zucchini is almost cooked through.

Add ¼ to ½ cup of chopped parsley or cilantro.