A Simple Sassy Soup

Are you a chickpea fan? Also called garbanzo beans, everybody loves them in hummus. I love them in soups and stews because they reflect tomato flavors so beautifully.

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I'm celebrating an anniversary! Ten long, lovely years of being self-employed and working from home. Started out as a marketing consultant, evolved into a freelance writer.

This lifestyle is not for everyone but it certainly suits me. Of all the things I could (and probably should) miss about an office environment, there's really one. Lunch.

I really, really miss going out to lunch and letting someone else do the cooking. Preparing 3 meals a day in my own kitchen is... well, messy. And, boring.

So, soup is often my fall back plan. I'll make big pots of it and freeze it in single serving containers. This one was an experiment. It's not a fancy recipe by any means. Made with stuff I happened to have on hand (therefore you, too, could get creative with the ingredients.) But, the end result was so yummy I just had to share!

Simple Sassy Soup

1. Finely chop an average size yellow onion + 4 cloves of fresh garlic
2. Cut an average size pork tenderloin* into small bite-size (soup-sized) pieces
3. Add 2 tbs olive oil to your skillet and stir fry, with the garlic and onion, until the tenderloin pieces are no longer pink.

In your soup pot, or crock pot ~

• 2 - 32 oz low sodium beef broth
• 1 - 14 oz can whole tomatoes 
• 2 - cans low sodium chickpeas 
• 1 - cup water
• 3 - TBS chili powder
• 1 - tsp. cumin
• 1 - tsp. smokey paprika
• 1 - tsp. oregano

Add your stir-fry concoction to the soup pot and simmer for about an hour or crock it for the day.

* You can, of course, use ground pork, beef or turkey instead of the tenderloin but I think that's what made it taste so yummy.
* Dried herbs are the better choice since this is a slow simmered recipe. They have a more concentrated flavor and they're way cheaper!
* Last but definitely not least, in winter months whole canned tomatoes are infinitely more flavorful than whole tomatoes in the produce section. Whole canned tomatoes are minimally processed, picked at the peak of freshness (when they're red, not green as fresh tomatoes often are) and canned within a half day of being plucked from the vine.

Enjoy!