Slow Cooker - Spinach, Parmesan, and Bean Soup

We forgot to take a picture or the end result. But it doesn't matter. Essentially the bean soup is an excuse to shovel in an obscene load of fresh baby spinach and Parmesan cheese.

First we sautéed half a big chopped onion for a few minutes.  Then we added a couple of garlic cloves and continued to sauté them for another 30 seconds or so.

In the meantime, we chopped up two handfuls of cherry tomatoes (alternatively a big can of chopped tomatoes will do the trick).

We added the tomatoes, 3 cans of cannellini beans, the onions and garlic,

1 quart of vegetable broth, a can worth of water, and a little salt and pepper to the slow cooker and set it on 4 hours high (or 8 hours low).

Then we harvested our herb garden for a couple handfuls of fresh herbs (in our case basil, thyme, and oregano) and added them to the soup.

We washed a good 5 handfuls of fresh baby spinach and looked for the Parmesan. When we were ready to eat, we filled our bowls with soup, loaded them up with spinach to each of our delight, sprinkled the whole goodness with cheese, and dug in. YUM!

Beans and Mashers

This turned out to be quite a lovely dish for a warm spring day in the Carolinas. We got two pots of water going and prepared a whole bunch of potatoes to boil in one of them; for mashed potatoes. Basically we cooked taters and mashed them up. (Here, though is the more extensive how-to-do including cream, butter, salt , and nutmeg).

Then we concentrated on the beans. We washed about 600g of green beans, cut the ends off and halved them.

Then we boiled them in the hot water for just about three minutes before we drained them.

Then we cut up 8 strips of bacon and fried them up all nice and crunchy.

In the meantime we drained 1 can of cannellini beans and diced up half a big onion and a handful of parsley,

We added a pat of butter to the bacon and

the onion and let it all melt for another three minutes.

Then we added the beans to warm them up and added a bit of salt and pepper.

That was it. Nice and easy. All this goodness was finally served with the parsley. It all in all took just 30 minutes.

Fennel Sausage, Fennel Soup, Saucy Fennel Fun

And this is how our second readers' recipe got mangled up in our kitchen of mischievous mayhem. The end result, however, was without doubt absolutely sensational. This recipe was sent over the big pond by the girls' German aunt, "Sister Tilla".

We plucked a small handful of sage leaves off their stems and

tossed them into 2 liter of boiling vegetable broth together with 2 cans of white cannellini beans. We let them simmer for half an hour. (Here is where we deviated the most substantially. Since Sister Tilla used dried bean soaked over night and cooked for an entire hour.)

In the meantime we chopped up 2 bulbs of fennel, half a big yellow onion, 6 cloves of garlic, a small handful of sun dried tomatoes (the kind without oil), and another small handful of sage leaves.

After about 15 minutes of boiling beans, we started to gently saute the veggies in olive oil, also for 15 minutes and then chucked them into the broth. After these first 30 minutes of cooking a five minute rhythm emerged.
We added the veggies and waited 5 minutes.

We added 6 sliced mild Italian sausages and waited 5  minutes.

We added a quarter pound of torchiette pasta (aren't they gorgeous) and waited 5 minutes.

Then we cut up some parsley and .... ate.

Thank you Tilla. It was really yuumylicious!

(We should share here the anecdote of  Sister Tilla tracking across Hamburg to her favorite Italian grocer Andronaco Grande Mercato for the sole purpose of procuring a "fennel sausage". Which took her maybe 45 minutes one way using public transportation. Since we weren't allowed such culinary and traveling luxury, we jumped out of the car, passing an Earth Fare store, offering a wonderful butcher counter. There we were told that all their basic Italian sausages were made with fennel.)

Beans and Bread

We chopped one huge onion, and sliced a few cloves of garlic.

And sautéd the bunch for about 10 minutes.

Then we added a couple heaping spoons of tomatoe paste, two cans of canellini beans, two cans of diced tomatoes, salt, and pepper.

We let it cook slowly for 15 minutes, while we prepared a quick chopped salad and warmed some yummy crusty bread.