White Bean and Kielbasa Soup

I have greens, lots and lots of greens! Salads are good but we've also got to figure out what to do with the rest of the greens. I decided to make a soup to use the cress raab from the share since it was so bitter I couldn't see eating it in salad form.

White Bean and Kielbasa Soup

1 lb dry white beans, soaked and cooked
1/2 lb kielbasa
olive oil
1 large onion
Water
2 cubes beef bullion
3 large tomatoes, peeled and diced
2 large parsnips, peeled and diced
Large bunch of greens, chopped
3 large carrots, peeled and diced
sage
white pepper
thyme
salt

Slice the kielbasa into small pieces and brown in olive oil. Add the onion and cook until clear. Toss in the greens and cook until limp. Add water and the rest of the ingredients. Add herbs to taste.

I tried the raab in this stuff, I added some to the kielbasa, then tasted it and decided it was still way too bitter to use so I composted the rest of it. Why eat what tastes awful? I used the bok choi from the share in its place.

I'm sure you could add just about any other veggie you've got floating around the house too.

We all ate it and liked it. Alas, it's all gone.

Crockpot test

I'm not a huge fan of the crockpot, they seem to make everything taste the same but in the interest of experimentation, I thought I'd give it a try.

I had a bunch of yellow peas, not split, from the farm share. I've never worked with whole peas but was told that should soak them over night prior to use so I got everything ready to go yesterday and tossed the soaked peas in there this morning. Did I mention that I'd tossed some frozen stuff in there? I had some frozen moose stock (doesn't everyone?) and my spinach was also frozen but I just tossed it is.


Andouille & Pea Stew

1 lb dried peas, soaked
1 lb Andouille Sausage, sliced
1 onion chopped
2 stalks celery chopped
1 large can diced Tomatoes
black pepper
3 cloves garlic chopped
1 box frozen chopped spinach
1 1/2 c moose stock

I cooked this for nearly 12 hours and guess what? The peas are still hard as rocks. I guess they need to be cooked before tossing them in here but wouldn't you think they'd cook IN the crockpot after all that time? Dang! I'd been expecting them to fall apart into split peas and turn into a thick mass, similar to pea soup but that's definitely not what's happened so far.

At this point I think I'll keep it cooking until tomorrow morning and see if the peas turn edible otherwise this needs to be categorized as a great disaster.

Update: The peas stayed hardish even with another 8 hours or more of cooking. They tasted fine but I hope they don't have, er, digestive side effects. The stuff tasted ver good overall but I think if I make something like this in the future I'll precook the legumes.