I'm a big fan of salad, but when the weather gets blustery, nothing beats a big bowl of homecooked soup. To get back into the WanderFood Wednesday groove, here's a quick homage to a recent masterpiece: minestrone!

According to The Kitchen Project, "minestrone means 'Big Soup' to Italians and means a soup with lots of goodies in it." For me, it's all about the beans. Traditional minestrone usually calls for cannellini or great northern beans, but I happened to have a delightful melange of dried beans on hand from last year's garden.

Jacob's Cattle, Cherokee Cornfield, Black Turtle, and "Big Red Ripper" cowpeas

I was a little sad that these beans mostly reverted to a standard brown color when cooked, but it was fun to see them all mixed together in the pot. One love!

The final product was an adhoc mix of whatever veggies we happened to have around, elbow pasta, plus some beef stock and a dash of tomato juice just to give it some extra oomph. The crowning glory was a cube of frozen pesto, made last year at the height of summer basil production. As the pesto cube melts into the hot soup, it provides just the right splash of garden-fresh flavor.

ahhhhhhh

Snuggle up by the fire with a bowl of this homecooked goodness, and all the world's cares melt away in a haze of basil and garlic. Soup IS good food!

Be sure to check out Wanderlust & Lipstick's WanderFood Wednesday for more mouth-watering travel foodie posts.

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