A Souper Sunday

So many weekends, so many recipes to try... today I decided to give an actual Weight Watchers recipe a try. Here's my version of their Spicy Black Bean Soup.

The only real variations I did to the original recipe was that I used frozen corn kernels instead of canned, and frozen chopped onion instead of a whole. I eyeballed the amounts of both of those, and it seemed to work just fine. Here are all the fixin's, minus the onion that I forgot to get out of the freezer at first:

I did use my handy new SlapChop to mince those cloves of garlic. :-)

Per the recipe, I did a lot of transferring from the pot to my little mini-chop and back. Just a word of warning: This recipe is messy. And black bean mess is not pretty - that weird purple-brown color gets everywhere.

Anyway here are all the ingredients mixed into the pot. That purple color gets deeper and darker as it cooks. Note: there was a LOT of liquid here, and I had to spoon some out in order to cook it in my big pot. Next time, I would drain out some of the liquid from the beans.


And here's my finished product. I added 2 things to the recipe: some reduced fat shredded "Mexican blend" cheese and a big spoonful of fat-free sour cream. Both worked really well, and upped the points value but also added some dairy. This was VERY tasty, definitely a keeper. I ended up with 2 big plastic containers of it that are now chillin' in the freezer. Next time, I think I'll add even more cumin and red pepper flakes just to add more zippy, smoky flavor.

Side note: I was asked once why I take pictures of what I'm cooking. I got the idea from Scotte, of course, but I've found it's really helpful for me to read posts like his... I'm such a visual learner, and just reading a recipe alone often doesn't give me enough info to be able to confidently plunge ahead and start cooking. Seeing pictures of a recipe in its various stages REALLY helps me know that I'm doing the right thing, so that's why I take the pictures and post them here myself in the hopes it will help someone else.