Healing Bean and Root Vegetable Soup

¾c dried cow peas~

~or other small beans

Rinse the beans and pick through them, discarding any split, abnormal beans, or tiny pebbles. (unless you're going for a vegetable version of Stone Soup 😉 )  Put beans into a 2qt pot and cover with about 3" of water.  Bring to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.  Shut off, cover and remove from the heat to sit and soak.

3 stalks of celery

5 lg. cloves garlic
1# fresh asparagus

2 med. carrots

1 purple onion

1 golden beet

1 turnip

4 lg. radishes

4 mini peppers

2T garlic sea salt

1T+ Italian seasonings

1T+ fresh ground pepper

2T Tuscan flavored olive oil

1 28oz. can petite diced tomatoes
1 15oz. can of corn ~ optional
3 Rose red potatoes

celery tops

This is a nice, slow-putzy recipe - taking about 4 hours from start to finish.  Perfect for a chilly, winter day when you'll be at home, cleaning, doing laundry, reading, spending time on 'house things'.

In a 5qt. pot, combine the large group of scrubbed vegetables; that you've sliced, diced, or chopped, according to the size you want them in the soup; with the oil.  Saute' these over low heat, just until they sizzle.  Add 2c of the bean water and simmer 20 minutes.  Add the last group of ingredients and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes, then shut off the heat and cover.  Bring the beans back to a simmer for another 10 minutes, then turn off the heat.

After an hour, check the beans again and continue to repeat the cook-soak process, if necessary, until they're almost tender.  Mine were ready now.  Check the vegetables to be sure they're cooked enough, but not much beyond crisp tender.  Add the beans, more bean water or vegetable stock, check the flavors and season accordingly.  This is great just as is if you're keeping an eye on your carb intake, but would also be wonderful with some jalapeno cornbread or crusty buttered Italian bread or French baguettes.  Bon Appetit!

NOTE:  This starts out as a very healthy soup, but it's good to remember that water-soluble vitamins; Vit. C and all the B vitamins; are destroyed when heated, so try to keep cooking time minimal.  Potatoes always cook fast.  Even though mine were pretty chunky, I had them in the first group of ingredients.  They cooked too fast and got mushy, so I put them in the second group for the recipe.  The asparagus didn't cook quite enough. 😕 They were originally in with the tomato group, so I relocated them to the first group for your instructions.  Ahhh, trial and error sometimes!  Lin