Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write about a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twenty-seventh day of the month is "Priority."
****************
We have a friend who successfully underwent a surgery for his cancer a couple of weeks ago, after months of chemotherapy and radiation. I have been checking in with him via text, but other than that, we've been trying to let him recuperate and not worry about entertaining us.
I checked in on Friday and asked him if it would be okay if we brought over some goodies and he said it would be, but that he and his caretakers have all tested positive for COVID. Since he is one of the main reasons we have been super cautious, I was a bit surprised (also, a bit nervous because he just had major abdominal surgery and if he was coughing a lot this could be bad)! I decided I would make him cookies and soup.
But my husband interfered. He's so worried about food safety and wanted to know how I was going to get the soup cooled safely in an appropriate amount of time because the last thing we want to do is get our COVID positive, healing from surgery friend sick with food poisoning. Next thing I know, he's off to the store to buy ice and now there's soup cooling in an ice bath in our sink.
 |
| No comments about our sink, please. We live in a river town with the hardest of hard water. |
Pumkin Bean "Chili" (recipe from my SIL!)
3-4 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can black beans
1 can chickpeas
4 cups chicken (or vegetable) broth
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar (or sherry vinegar)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 can pumpkin
Cheese to garnish (optional)
Pumpkinseed kernels or sunflower seeds to garnish (optional)
Heat butter over medium-low heat.
Add onion and salt and sauté until lightly browned (15-20 minutes).
Add the cumin and garlic and sauté for another minute.
Add the tomatoes, black beans, and chickpeas and partially mash with an immersion blender (I mean, I guess you can use a real blender, but that's a lot of dishes, if you ask me.) Basically, I blend until there are no pieces of bean or chickpea that can be identified as such.
Add broth, white wine vinegar, pepper, and pumpkin. Cover and bring to a simmer for 20 minutes.
Serve with your choice of garnish.
This recipe seems so bizarre, or at least it does to me. Pumpkin, black beans, AND chickpeas? What is this? It's delicious is what it is. I think of it as a vegetarian chili recipe (although we use chicken broth, so it's not truly vegetarian) and think it's so great with a little cheddar sprinkled on top of it.
What's your go-to winter soup recipe?
Oh, I am sorry to hear he's got covid! I hope it's a very mild case.
ReplyDeleteOh wow. I had no idea there was such a science to cooling soup. I guess I should be more aware in the future since the last thing we need around here is food poisoning. That recipe does sound delicious! I've made pumpkin chili before, and this sounds similar. I hope your friend enjoys it, and that he's not suffering too much from Covid! Poor guy.
ReplyDeleteWe talk about food safety all the time. Sometimes I'm jealous of the people who just don't think about it!
DeleteI love to make Ina Garten's Winter Squash Soup, which also uses pumpkin. I also make dog treats with pumpkin for my granddog.
ReplyDeleteYour poor friend! Like he doesn't have enough to deal with already. :-(
Oh, I wonder if my SIL's recipe is based on the Ina Garten one. We do a butternut squash soup that's also pretty good, but we've been relying on this one a lot this year because we can't find any butternut squash around here.
DeleteI love chili but have never tried pumpkin chili. I generally don't care for pumpkin flavored things (am I weird?) but I wonder if in a chili the flavor would be so mixed and subtle that it might be okay or even really good! I just don't really love pumpkin desserts or the whole "pumpkin spice" thing! So sweet of you to make food for your friend.
ReplyDeleteIf you asked me to list the ingredients in this soup, I would never get to pumpkin. I don't taste it at all. I think it just adds some body and thickness to the soup. Honestly, if I closed my eyes and took a spoonful, I'd say this was regular chili with meat. The chickpeas and black beans end up with a similar texture to ground beef (imo, but I haven't had ground beef in...years?, so I might be a bit off on that). Anyway, if you're looking for a relatively easy soup, this is probably okay even for meat eaters!
DeleteThe soup/chili looks so interesting. You are such a kind friend!! Hopefully his case is very mild and he will be as good as new soon.
ReplyDeleteYes, his case has been very mild and I think he's going to be just fine!
DeleteOh NO! He and his caregivers have Covid?!?! That's awful! I hope it is mild. You are so sweet to bring him treats. A soup is so warming both physically and emotionally.
ReplyDeleteI have so many favorite soups. Mulligatawny. Chicken tortilla. French onion. Lobster bisque. Lentil. White bean enchilada. Butternut squash. Corn chowder. Asparagus. Garlicky chickpea and spinach. Yum. Now I am craving soup!
What kind of cookies did you bake for your friend?
I just made some OG Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookies because they are easy and delicious and I had some dough in the freezer all ready to go. :)
DeleteThis sounds delish! Also, Ben is the king of food unsafety. Like, the cooling issue would never occur to him. OR smetimes he is unreasonably concerned that things NEED to cool SLOWLY and will just, like leave cooked meat on the counter to grow the bacteria that will kill us.
ReplyDeleteOh, no! My husband would NEVER let that happen. We talk about food safety SO MUCH and it's actually the number one reason we're pretty much vegetarian at this point - we could never figure out how to safely prepare and cook meat. LOL. I mean, yes, we care about the environment and animal welfare, but mostly we just couldn't figure out how to make it safely in our kitchen.
DeleteI literally never think about cooling soup in an appropriate manner! Or anything, really. I let soup cool in the pot, then stick it in the fridge or freezer in a container. I figure that if there's anything harmful, it will get killed either from the freezing or from the reheating. Meh, it's probably wrong of me, but oh well.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry your friend has Covid, may he heal quickly!
That soup looks pretty yummy!
Nicole--This is my method too... I had a moment of anxiety, but figured my family's biomes must be already strengthened from decades of my laxity. Ha.
DeleteEngie--I wish your friend and and their caregivers a speedy and complete recovery!
Ha to both of you! I think when we make soup for ourselves, it's less of an issue because we eat some and so it's not a huge vat of soup that needs to be cooled. If we eat it for dinner and then put it in the fridge, it will cool appropriately. It was just that in this case, we weren't eating any of it, so we had too much for our fridge to cool appropriately. You're probably doing okay if you're just talking about household use and not taking huge amounts of soup over to cancer patients!
DeleteI make the same winter squash soup that Nance makes, it is delicious. And I love black bean chili. Never thought to combine the two, but I am going to give this recipe a try, it sounds so interesting!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry your friend has COVID, that is crummy. I'm glad that thus far it is mild. I hope it stays that way, no long COVID, etc.
I do think this recipe is delicious and it's very popular with my in-laws, so I'm not the only one. If you try it, I'd love to know how it goes.
DeleteMy thoughts are with your friend and their double recovery (as well as their caretakers' - that's a lot!). Much like your husband, that would have been my guy's first thought; he's an Alton Brown devotee and has us both able to recite the "4 Cs" to keep food out of the danger zone and stored appropriately haha!
ReplyDeleteMy husband is a lunatic about food safety, so I basically leave it to him! Ha! I love that I can delegate food prep and storage to him.
DeleteI have a sweet potato soup for which I roast the sweet potatoes first. Don’t ask me the rest of the recipe right now. I know it has broth, but I can’t remember if it is vegetable or chicken. I also know that we serve it with a dollop of sour cream.
ReplyDeleteI have a butternut squash soup recipe that says sweet potatoes can be substituted. Maybe I should try that someday.
DeleteI have had a chili recipe with pumpkin in it and was skeptical I would like it since I'm not HUGE on pumpkin, but I did not taste it at all! So I would be willing to try this!
ReplyDeleteI would have never thought to worry about how we went about cooling the soup! It is kind of you guys to take extra precautions since your friend is going through so much as is! I hope his covid case is very mild. Poor guy!
We have a couple of go to soup/chili recipes - last weekend I made a big pot of chicken wild rice soup in our instant pot, and then we have 2 different chili recipes - one is a 3-bean turkey chili, the other is a "sweet and spicy" chili - it has brown sugar and vegetarian baked beans in it. That is my go to recipe to make when we get together w/ Phil's college friends because the guys all love it!
Oh, I'd be interested in the "sweet and spicy" chili recipe. I am all about delicious vegetarian recipes!
DeleteYour husband would die to see how I ignore food "safety". Expiration dates? Eh. My nose is better. Things in the freezer for 2 months? Puh-leeze. (Although I do see the point of trying not to poison one's immunocompromised friend...). I'm glad you said the chili doesn't taste pumpkin-y, because it kind of sounds good and it's vegetarian and... maybe I'll try it (well, half a recipe, anyway) sometime. :)
ReplyDelete