Three Bean Minestrone Soup

Well, I forgot to take a picture of this, but it turned out really good! Plus, aren't soups in the fall/winter the BEST?! As I was cooking this, I came up with a tip. Homemade soups are really awesome, but can be a pain to put together. SO, here's my tip: when you are feeling ambitious, make a few "soup kits". In your soup kit, cut up one onion, 2 carrots and 2 celery stalks. Go ahead and freeze in your freezer. So many soups start with these three ingredients. This way when you want to make a soup, all you have to do is add chicken or beans or ham or beef and broth of your liking!

Earlier this week, I put 3/4 cup of black beans, red beans, and white beans into my crockpot and cooked them overnight. My plan was to mash them up in my food grinder and turn them into baby food for Katelyn (which I did.) But before I did that, I decided to use some of them in a soup. I was inspired to make this recipe by Robin Miller (a show I often watch), but I changed quite a bit. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:
1 medium to large onion diced
2 large carrots diced
2 celery stalks diced (don't be afriad to use the leaves of the stalk too-they are good!)
1 28 ounce can of diced tomatoes (and juice)
1 medium zucchini (diced)
1/2 package of frozen spinach
Beans (see above for amount) but you could use just one kind of bean too and you could use them from a can instead of dry and cooking them ahead of time.
1 cup of noodles of your choice (I used egg noodles)
2 bay leaves
2 teas thyme
1 teas rosemary
1 teas celery salt
1 teas onion powder
black pepper to taste


Put onions, carrots and celery into your crockpot. Add tomatoes (with juice!) and 1 cup water. Add spices (feel free to add more of any of the above spices to taste :)) Let simmer on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours. Approximately 1/2 hour before you are ready to serve, add zucchini, spinich and noodles (cooked.) Enjoy!