Black Bean, Zucchini, Corn and Bell Pepper soup

One pot meals are perfect when you want to make something without too much clean up. They are also great if you make a whole bunch of it so you can take the next day off of cooking, except of course to warm it up :) . Soup seems to be a wonderful way to achieve this easily. Not only can you make it pretty easily but most of the time it's very healthy as well!

Anything can be made into soup, just have to add water (usually unless it's something like a chowder where milk or cream is used instead). I happened to have a few cans of black beans (I tend to try to keep them in stock though :) ) and some veggies. A zucchini, three ears of corn, two bell peppers (one yellow and one red), a red onion, and about four cloves of garlic made up the veggies. We like meat at our house so I added in ground beef and ground pork but this would have been perfectly good without it.

Slice the zucchini in rounds then cut them in quarters, put to the side in a bowl for later. Chop the bell peppers and add them to the same bowl as the zucchini. In a big soup pot get some olive oil heating up on med-low heat and chop the red onion and the garlic, adding it to the pot and letting it soften before adding the pork and beef to brown. Rinse the black beans, adding them after the meat is cooked most of the way through. Add in about 10 cups of water, salt and pepper to taste and a couple bay leaves (make sure to remove the bay leaves when the soup is done because in the words of Alton Brown "they aren't good eats!").

Now for the corn. This was the fun part (well only a little fun, more like dirty). Take the husk and silk off the corn and grab a bowl. If you can still see pretty decently with out them, take your glasses off or you will be cleaning them after this. Set the pointy end down in the bowl and take a rather sharp knife and cut the kernels off the cob. I personally got sprayed in the face numerous times while I was doing this, hence the previous warning :). Put the kernels into the zucchini and bell pepper bowl.

Let the soup cook for about an hour at the least and about 5-10 minutes before you are ready to eat taste the broth to make sure there is enough salt and pepper and then season accordingly. At this point you want to add in the veggies we set to the side. If you like yours softer, then by all means put them in sooner, waiting just lets them have a bit of a bite to them.

My husband always says, "This soup is good for the soul." when I make it, Here's to hoping you'll agree!