Veggie Stew

My dad claims, in his blustery way, that cooking is easy, "You just slosh it through the pan and put it on the table. Cleaning up is the hard part."

To me, soups are the epitome of "sloshing it through the pan." You can put basically anything in soup, and when it is done, you will have a lovely, steaming hot bowl of goodness.

And so I make soups. I have told you before about soup, because it was what I was eating during the summer. Which really didn't seem weird at the time. But I realize that soup is even better when it is chilly out.

I pulled this recipe from Allrecipes.com (I think), but because soups are best when you just throw in whatever you like, I modified it. This is a good basis though, just to get started.

Vegetable Stew
1 eggplant, cubed
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup uncooked rice
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
2 1/2 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
pinch each of basil, parsley, rosemary

Saute eggplant in extra virgin olive oil. Add the minced garlic. Stir in all other ingredients (except last 3 spices), simmer for 45 min. Remove from heat and add basil, parsley, and rosemary.

This time, I added black beans, left out the green bell pepper, used a can of diced tomatoes, and a little chicken broth, and used my spicy hot chiles (just a little) in place of the red pepper flakes.