Delicious Minestrone

The recipe is from cooksillustrated.com

You have to suscribe with a yearly fee to access, so I can’t post the specific recipe here. Cook’s Illustrated is based in Brookline, MA and accepts NO advertising for it’s bi-monthly magazines or it’s website. Along with the Utne Reader, it is a subscription I keep going even when money is tight. Some “fancy-shamcy” stuff, but lots of great ideas and recipes, as well as totally unbiased food, cookware, appliance, and utensil reviews.

Anyway – minestrone soup is basically chopping up a modest variety of veggies, using fancy or regular bacon or a good quality hard cheese rind to boost the flavor, and adding pesto (basil or rosemary) for a final kick. YUM!!!!

It calls for some diced potato, and there is a version with rice or pasta, but none of those freeze well, and I like to freeze portions. The potato actually seemed okay after freezing in the last batch I made, but this time I used corn for the starch since I had three ears in the fridge that were nearing their end of usefulness. 🙂

The recipe also calls for canned cannellini beans. In the directions, it says not to add the beans or pesto until ready to eat- implying that, if freezing, don’t add beans or pesto until defrosted. …Well, that’s too complicated for my lifestyle since I want to freeze a couple of 4 cup portions!

I froze this soup with both the beans and pesto last time, and it was fine.

I have to get back into serious meal planning because I now work outside of the home on Tues and Thursdays and don’t get home until around 8:00 pm (!) I need to make sure I have VERY quick and easy meals ready for those nights. Hopefully, I’ll get back to posting more regularly as I do my meal planning and experimenting with good “freeze for later” meals.

🙂