Spinach Pepper Soup – $.60

So it’s the end of the week and all I have left in my fridge is some leftover chili, an onion, a bell pepper and some spinach that isn’t quite fit for eating fresh. What to do? Soup! That’s what to do! What I love about soup is that it’s flippin’ fast, easy, and you don’t need fancy ingredients to make a decent meal. I was literally in and out of the kitchen in about 15 minutes. A perfect get-home-from-work-with-nothing-left-in-the-fridge dish.

Side note: It’s a dairy based soup with a bit of flour in it- so don’t sit on your butt and eat this all day thinking the pounds will fall off of you. Ok? Cool thing is, though, that you can use this method of soup cooking for just about any veggies or meat that you want. Also, if you’ve got a sensitive stomach like my roommate, this kind of thing is perfect.

Start by chopping up one onion and one bell pepper. Doesn’t matter what it looks like, it’ll be ground up anyway.

Stick the veggies in a heated, greased pot on medium high heat. Throw some salt in there.

When the onions start to brown, add a tablespoon or so of flour. Immediately stir and keep stirring another 60 seconds or so. If it’s very dry, you may need to add just a bit of EVOO. (Sorry to sound like silly Rachel Ray there, but I don’t want to type Extra Virgin Olive Oil anymore.)

After about 60 seconds of stirring, you’ll start to feel a little uncomfortable with the flour cooking on high heat. So throw about 1/2 cup of milk on the dance floor to calm everyone down. Don’t stop stirring! In about 10 seconds or so you’ll see the mixture thickening up quite a bit. Add another cup of milk. Stir. Then add another cup or so of milk. Don’t throw it in all at one time- it’ll end up chunky and weird.

Then add a handful of spinach in here. Honestly, add as much as you want. This is all I had left in my bag. Stir it up.

When the spinach wilts, go ahead and throw it in a blender or food processor. (Making sure that doggon’ spout is closed before you pour in the boiling liquid! GAH! Why do I keep doing that?!)

Pulverize and then pour the mixture back in the pot. Taste it and see what spices you’d like to put into it. I was a bit of a minimalist and just put salt and garlic powder in it. Do whatever you want.

Your soup is basically done. Make sure it’s warm enough and spiced properly and serve! I have found that if I let a milk-based soup like this sit on the heat for more than 45 minutes to an hour, it does really weird things…. which is good for you because it’s so quick!

Serve it plain….

….or with bread, mushrooms and paprika.

If you’re cooking for one like I am, and you’re not a huge soup eater, I recommend letting it cool and bagging individual portions for later. I put mine in the freezer lying flat like this so I’d have a few meals in the next week.

Onion – $.60
Pepper – $.73
Handful o’ Spinach – $.30
A few cups of milk – ~$.75
4 Servings of soup – $2.38
1 Serving of soup – $.60