Sunday Soup

On Sunday afternoons, in the fall and winter, I like to make a big pot of soup. Even though it was 80 degrees today (not great soup weather), I went ahead with it. I was starting to hit that wall that I sometimes hit in the afternoon. Some days, I'll have a big glass of iced coffee to get me through it. Today I settled for Gorillaz "Demon Days". If that album doesn't get you going, I don't think anything will. My first exposure to "Demon Days" was seeing the Gorillaz perform it live on one of those DirectTV free-music channels. Mine and Sleek's jaws hit the floor. We were completely blown away. Funny Gorillaz story: I guess we listened to the Gorillaz a lot after that, because Sleek and I were discussing The Monkees one day. Our daughter asked who The Monkees were. We told her that they were a band. She said, "Oh. Sort of like the Gorillaz?"

So, on to the soup. I decided to make just a basic vegetable soup, and then top it off with some simple Bisquick dumplings. I started by pouring into a large pot: 32 oz. of No-Chicken broth, a 28oz can of diced tomatos, and another can of 28oz diced tomatoes that I pureed in the blender. To that I added one cube of vegetable bouillon and some salt, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder and oregano. Next, I diced (1 inch dice) 3 enormous potatoes. I threw those in, and sliced 2 really big carrots. I brought it up to boil, then reduced the heat and simmered for about 2 hours. Then, I added 1/2 a bag of frozen cut green beans and about 1/2 a bag of lima beans. I let that simmer for about 30 minutes. The pot was so full, that I had to ladle out a decent amount of soup before adding the dumplings. So, I put the dumplings in and let them cook. 20 minutes later, the soup was ready. Very nice for a Sunday evening dinner.