I just made this one up this past week when I decided to start cutting a lot of meat out of my diet, and my whole family absolutely LOVED it. It started as White Chicken Chili, but I made a few adjustments and some changes. It's actually quite easy, but it takes a while, and you can't be afraid of fire!
Vegetable Bean Soup
16oz. dry navy beans
5 cans vegetable broth or equivalent homemade or carton broth
3 peppers - combination of poblano and any color bell
2 medium onions or more if you like onions - roughly chopped
4 or 5 yellow squash and zucchini
several stalks of celery rough chopped
minced garlic to taste
mixed frozen veggies
olive oil
cumin
black pepper
half a bunch of cilantro or parsley - don't EVEN tell me you guys don't have one or the other around!
italian seasoning
latex gloves (unless you don't mind the peppers on your skin)
Rinse dry beans and soak for 2 hours. While beans are soaking, prep the rest of your veggies. Roast peppers (2 poblano chili/1 bell for spicier or 1 poblano/2 bell or 3 bell if you don't like the heat) on grill or under broiler until skin turns black. Put peppers in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap for about 15 minutes. While waiting for the peppers to steam, cut the squash and zucchini in half long ways, season with olive oil and S&P and lightly grill or broil. Chop squash/zuchs in bit size chunks. Put on gloves. Skin will now peel and/or rub off of the peppers easily. Cut peppers open and remove seeds, but do not rinse the peppers. Cut peppers into small pieces and set aside. In a saute pan, lightly saute the onions, celery, and as much garlic as you like. Remove most of the stems from the cilantro and chop. Once all veggies are prepped, spend the rest of the two hours of bean soak time reading/replying to threads on cavycages! After the 2 hours, drain the beans and put into a large pot with broth, all prepped veggies, a couple tablespoons of cumin, black pepper to taste, italian seasoning, and chopped cilantro. Cook for 1hr 30 min to 1hr 45min, stirring often. During the last 30 minutes add in the frozen veggies.
You can also add canned tomatoes to this if you want, but my mom hates tomatoes, so I left them out, and I still thought it was very good. If you have any other veggies you like, add them as well. I recommend either grilling, broiling or sauteeing any hard veggies a bit first and adding them with the first batch, or if you want to add mushrooms, add them at the last 30 minutes with the frozen veggies. After the fact I also thought about adding fresh shredded spinach in the last couple of minutes.
VERY versatile recipe that will take pretty much anything in the veg drawer!