No tomatoes, please

Ahhh November. Even though it was stiflingly hot up until the end of October, daylight savings time has brought a sudden coldness with its depressing early darkness, and everyone has decided that they are sick. It’s amazing how achy and stuffy you feel when it gets dark at 4:30. There’s the flu going around, and colds, and a dry, hacking cough, and maybe ebola or something or other. But one thing’s for sure: When you’re sick, you want soup. I myself have been on the verge of getting sick for some time now. I have developed one of those hacking, gross chest coughs that seem to befall me every 6 months or so, and stick around for a while so I can bother my mother with my hacking hacking hacking.

I’ve also been dealing with some random stabbing pain in my throat lately, to the point where all I want is tea and some sort of other hot, salty liquid to fill my food quotient for the day. I know cooking is pretty much the last freakin thing you want to do when you’re all sick and gross-feeling, but if you’re up to it, this is so good, and it’s really fulfilling to make yourself something delicious and sustaining when you feel like hell. Almost makes you feel like a grown-up or something. Or, you can just act pitiful and guilt a hot friend into bringing you some chicken noodle soup. Or even making you some of this, if you’re particularly enterprising. So, in honor of everyone being sick, here’s a recipe I made up for bean with bacon soup. It sounds weird as hell, but it’s so good, because bacon makes everything awesome. Here it is, copied in its entirety from a previous blog I had, mostly because it’s pretty funny. Little backstory: I figured out the soup this summer when I was home from work because I almost cut the tip of my finger off while I was catering. Yeah, I almost cut my finger off, and what did I decide to do? Chop some crap. Yeah, whatever. Welcome to my world.

Since I was couch-bound today, due to my knife accident at work yesterday (tomatoes + newly sharpened knife + slippage = finger hemorrhage and three stitches yay), I decided to cook some soup. I’ve been toying for a while now with the idea of making some bean with bacon soup, since it’s my favorite kind from the Campbell’s, and I thought it would be pretty easy. And yeah, it’s pretty damn simple to make. So, after navigating the Food Lion and the scary toothless cashierlady with my awesome heavily-bandaged middle finger, I spent $4 and had the makings of some friggin awesome soup. It only has 6 ingredients, and it’s retardedly easy. The longest part of the process was chopping the carrot, but mostly because it was round and I have one less finger than normal. It’s really only enough friggin awesome soup for 1-2 people, but you can double the recipe and add more beans, or a different kind or whatever.

I started out by awkwardly chopping up three slices of bacon. I used three slices because they were little, but you can use more or less if you want. You want to make sure the bacon is pretty fatty, cuz when you cook it, it’s gonna render the fat out, and you want enough fat in there to cook the onions and carrots. So, I threw that in a small pot over some medium heat and let it cook down while I chopped a small-ish carrot (peeled, but mostly because I’m the type of person who likes that little extra Martha Stewart anal-retentive step. I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t mind dirt and little root bits in your soup. But whatever.) and half a small onion. Make sure and chop both pretty fine, especially the onion, because it cooks faster, and also gross big chunks of onion are not appetizing in soup. I think. So, I threw those in there and let them cook down slowly while I proceeded to wash, slice and eat an entire quart of strawberries. So, about 10, 15 minutes? You want to make sure that the veggies are really nice and soft. This is also where you want to add salt and pepper. I didn’t add too much salt because I thought the mixture of bacon and canned chicken stock would add up to enough season, but I ended up needing more in the end, so don’t be lame about the salt. Then I threw in a spoonful of tomato paste and stirred that around and let it kinda melt from the heat. Next I added a can of chicken stock (low sodium), a can full of water, and a can of white beans with the farty bean juice. I got Great Northern beans, even though I was looking for Navy beans, but really any white not-too-huge bean will do, like Cannellini (Bam. Wikipedia confirms my genius, yet again. All three are pretty much the same bean). Then just bring it to a simmer for about 20-25 minutes to make sure everything is nice and heated through, and the beans get a little more cooked, and bam, you got dinner. Or a nice light lunch. Impeccable with grilled cheese. Or, if you’re sick, and tired of chicken noodle soup, this’ll also cure what ails you. Awesome. 

That is all. Enjoy!

In case you were wondering what the hell that crazy picture is, it’s a Francis Bacon. Get it? Yuk yuk.