10-Bean-Soup...delicious and nearly free!

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

I am always looking for ways to save at the grocery store and still feed my family nutritious, tasty dinners.

Dinners that cost me less than $1 per person are always a bonus! I have been shopping at Sprouts more frequently lately, and found something I wanted to try on a recommendation from my Mom. Ten-bean soup is something that you purchase dry by the scoop at Sprouts. It costs about $1.75 per pound, and you’d be STUNNED at how much soup you can get for a pound!

After purchasing the soup, I began searching for recipes in Google and stumbled upon a recipe that looked SO delicious. My recipe came from HERE by Meenakshi Matai. She was very gracious and willing to let me blog about my experience using her recipe.

There were a few things that I found to be attractive about her recipe. #1 – I already had most of the ingredients needed to make the soup. #2 – You can soak the beans while you are sleeping, and begin preparing the soup in the morning. One of my favorite things to do is, after lunches are packed, beds are made, and breakfast is served, I like to have SOME idea of what is for dinner, and prepare what I can ahead of time. With this recipe, you have already soaked the beans the night before, and you add all of the ingredients to your Crockpot or slow cooker, and you are done with dinner! How sweet is that?! #3 – this meal is quite low in calories because it contains only beans, vegetables, water and spices. You can feel completely guiltless after eating dinner!

My recipe varied slightly from Meenakshi’s because I did not have a green pepper to add to my 10-bean soup. I also didn’t have any fresh tomatoes, but I DID have a can of whole tomatoes seasoned with basil. I added these to my soup. It smelled absolutely delicious in the house all day long, and I couldn’t WAIT to try my new, nearly free soup! The soup was very flavorful and tasty. I made 1.5 of her recipes because I bought 1.5 cups of 10-beans, and WHOA did it make a lot of soup! I didn’t buy NEARLY a pound of beans, so I only spent pennies on our dinner. I froze the leftovers, and we will have them again next week – so that cuts in HALF what I spent because we will be eating it TWICE! I served a small salad with our soup, and it was a delicious dinner, indeed!

Speaking of Sprouts – I purchase something exclusively from Sprouts that I MUST tell you about! Organic lollipops! My Mom first purchased these lollipops for my daughter when she was around 6 months old. We were going to get brave and cut her hair, but we needed something to distract her and keep her still for long enough to trim! My Mom is a huge Sprouts shopper, and she stumbled upon them during one of her shopping trips. The flavors are so intense and delicious that you feel like you have the authentic fruit in your mouth. Emily loves them and they have saved my butt numerous times on long phone conversations, plane rides, and salon haircuts! You can purchase them in a small bag, or individually (6 suckers for $1) at the register. Sprouts is also running a special for Easter and a GIANT bag of assorted flavors of these organic lollipops is $4.99 right now.