Minestrone Soup |

Once upon a time long ago, before cell phones, text messages, Facebook, instagram, snapchat, twitter, you tube and cable, people spent a lot more time with each other. When Reggie and I were first married, I signed us up for cooking classes. Once a week we trekked to Los Feliz to a home based cooking school where we prepared italian, chinese, french and spanish cuisine, along with 4 other couples.

Fast forward to Food Network, a bajillion online cooking classes and we still go back to some of the recipes we made in those classes 20 plus years ago.

Now that I am home for a while, 3 trips this month was a bit much. I need to get back on my program, so for me the best way to ease back into my routine is to transition with some juicing and soup-ing along with my workouts.

I love this Minestrone soup recipe, I made a big pot this evening. It has a lot of steps, but well worth it.

Genoese Minestrone

10 cups of water or stock ( I use the no-chicken broth stock)

no chicken broth

1 can of kidney beans- drained

1 medium cabbage, cleaned, cored and sliced

1/2 pound of potatoes ( I use the little red ones)

2-3 stalks of celery

2 large carrots, sliced

2 zucchini ( I used the baby ones from Trader Joe’s)

1/2 pound of sugar snap peas

1/2 pound of string beans, topped and sliced

6 ounces of olive oil

fresh ground black pepper

1/2 pound of small pasta (can use gluten free pasta)

1 bunch of basil

6 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup of pecorino cheese grated (omit for vegan preparation)

salt

Put drained kidney beans, cover with 10 cups of stock or water. Add all the cleaned, chopped and sliced veggies. Reserve the snap peas to add just at the end. Add half the oil and simmer 40 minutes, or until the veggies are tender.

Add the pasta. Boil for 20 minutes.

Prepare pesto while pasta cooks. Put basil leaves and peeled garlic in the food processor. Process, adding olive oil and cheese, little salt and pepper.

Just before the pasta had finished cooking mix a little of the hot soup with the pesto and then add all back to the soup. cook until pasta is tender. Serve