White Bean and Kale Soup
Category: Soups & Salads | Blog URL: http://gourmetmealsforless.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/white-bean-and-kale-soup.html
This recipe was entered in The Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook contest, a compilation of the world’s best food blogs which was published in Fall 2010.
Photo: Heather Patterson
Ingredients
Preparation
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About
Cooking frugally is a combination of using fresh in season ingredients, utilizing high quality items you find on sale and being open to trying new things. In the past I make a decision to cook something and purchased the ingredients with no knowledge of whether my purchases were “seasonal” nor giving any thought to sale items, honestly I didn’t even know when something was a “good price” or not.
Now that I am into month two of my $10 challenge, I have to think differently. I have to be willing to make substitutes if necessary, I have to know what is in season and therefore the best price, and I have to to expand my horizons with new foods…for example kale.
This is a perfect time of year to purchase kale.
Since becoming a gardener this past year, I have had to learn what vegetables grown when. Kale (along with spinach, all varieties of lettuce, cabbage, etc) is a cool weather plant. That is why you will find leafy vegetables at the best price in winter and early spring.
I wanted to try my hand at some kale recipes, so I started scouring my various cookbooks and magazines and I noticed a reoccurring theme, kale is very popular in soup. So, wanting to use up some various sale items I had purchased recently and desiring to give kale a try, I attempted my own version of White Bean and Kale Soup. Combining several different recipes and adding some of my own touches, for example the canned tomatoes (purchased on sale for .40 a can, so now I have 20 of them lined up in my pantry) and the bacon (purchased on a buy one/get one free sale and begging to be used), this was my end result, and we sure did enjoy it!