Better than cold cereal

Since pictures of soup rarely look that appetizing and I know certain readers check often for any glimpse of baby girl, I thought I'd start with a photo of what we did today. My normal Sunday afternoon routine is to do a big grocery shopping trip for the week and prepare a nice, Sunday supper. Today after church, we headed out to Fillmore to take a train to a pumpkin patch. It was a long, fun day and by the time we got home, we were hungry, dusty, and tired. I thought we were going to eat out on our way home but we were too tired (and had a 2 year old who never took a nap) so we skipped the restaurant.

I didn't have enough produce to make a salad and I was just getting ready to get out some cold cereal when I thought that a bowl of soup sounded much better. It's been summer for so long that I have no canned soup in the house but luckily, I had the ingredients for this recipe. I made the soup in the amount of time it took my daughter to take a bath and put her PJs on (15 minutes).

It's an old recipe and it's not the best soup I've ever made, but it was warm and filling and better than fast food or cold cereal. Chances are, you have these ingredients in your pantry so if you need something quick and homemade, try it out. I added some Tapatio and red pepper flakes to make it spicier - I was wishing I had a jalapeno to saute with the onion - and served it with shredded cheese and sour cream.

Black Bean Soup (makes 4 cups)

1 medium red onion, chopped
1 15oz can of black beans, drained (you could add more - I only had 1 can)
1 14.5oz can chicken broth (I used 2 cups of the TJ's kind in a carton)
1 T lime juice
1 c. frozen corn (can used canned)
1 c. bottled chunky salsa
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion until tender. Take about half of the black beans and mash them with a fork in a small bowl. Add them to the pot with all of the other ingredients and simmer for about 10 minutes or until it's heated through.

*Vegetarian recipe if you use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth