Souper Sunday: New Year's Day Good Luck Soup

Happy New Year!

What’s a new year without a resolution right? I’ve been thinking the past few days about mine: the 876th diet attempt, being nicer, laughing more, yada yada yada. Last night as I was preparing my New Year’s Eve soups (see prior post) it was made abundantly clear as to what my new year’s resolution will be: simplicity. I need to stop trying to do it all. You know the ol’ "less is more," "quality over quantity," etc.

I was preparing three soups: taco soup, broccoli cheese and New Year’s Day good luck soup. In my mind this was going to be an uber-relaxing day full of great music, cooking, photographing and blogging my soups until my guests arrived. I was wrong. I got a way late start because I was trying to do too much like clean out a closet and reorganize my kitchen cabinets. I even made a run to the mall for hand soap and wash cloths because I couldn’t find any. I forgot that I wanted to make guacamole and I still needed to chop all of my veggies for my hummus. Needless to say, documenting these soups didn’t quite happen as I had hoped for as I was just starting cooking when my friend’s arrived.

Let me tell you why simplicity is my new resolution. Here’s what went wrong:

I bought fancy-smanshy bread and put it in the oven to cook. An hour and a half later I found it…charred unrecognizably. 2013: I’m buying crackers only.

I put my three soups in my brand-spanking-new 3 pot crockpot to cook and keep warm as we ate throughout the night. Forgot to plug it in. Didn’t notice until a couple of hours later. 2013: I’m preparing one soup. The other two will be frozen or canned.

Forgot to put in two main ingredients that thickens the broccoli cheese soup until it was too late. 2013: Eat it anyway.

2013: forget the organizing, cleaning, buying hand-soap and making appetizers.

Here is the recipe and pictures for New Year’s Day Good Luck Soup. Even though I probably didn’t do this recipe justice in pictures, it still turned out pretty good.

Ingredients:
1 package of carving board ham
2 celery ribs
1 medium onion
2 carrots
2 garlic cloves
2 (15-ounce) cans black-eyed peas
2 (14 1/2-ounce) cans low-sodium, fat-free chicken broth
2 (14 1/2-ounce) cans no-salt-added stewed tomatoes
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
2 cups chopped fresh kale
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (Tbsp of dried parsley)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Chop your onions, garlic and carrots in a food processor.

Dice your celery and sauté in a stockpot along with your onions, carrots and garlic.

Add your broth, tomatoes, tomato sauce, black beans, kale and ham and simmer about 30 minutes. I chopped up the kale and used frozen black beans. I bought the pre-cooked carving board ham for convenience. I would recommend that you use canned black-eyed peas if you are in a hurry because the frozen took a while to become tender. You can substitute spinach for kale if you like.

At first I didn’t think I was going to like this soup but after it cooked in the crockpot for a while, the flavors married nicely and the kale and black-eyes peas cooked well. I enjoyed this healthy soup and I think it will be my new New Year's tradition!