Delicious Black Bean Stew

I threw this stew together the other night, and I'm in love. Remember Steup? Well, this is kind of the same concept, but a bit heartier, and with lots of different flavors. It's going to seem like there are a LOT of ingredients in this stew, but there are really only a few main ingredients...the rest was just a bunch of stuff I had hanging around (which was how I came up with this stew in the first place, just trying to use up the perishable food I knew would go bad if I didn't do something fast). The main ingredients are black beans, tomato, taco seasoning, and some type of grain. Once you have those ingredients, just throw in what you have available.

I made this stew twice (once for dinner, and once to freeze and eat later), and I had different ingredients each time, so I'll tell you about both versions. One thing's for sure...this is not a recipe for those who have to stick to a recipe! Be creative and have fun with it!

Black Bean Stew
Black beans - 1 pound for a medium crock pot, 2 pounds for a large crock pot - soaked overnight
"Grandma's Grain" or barley, or whatever you have on hand
Tomatoes - I used at least 10 tomatoes in each batch. You can probably use canned stewed tomatoes or whatever you have available.
Taco Seasoning - 1 packet for a medium crock pot, 2 packets for a large crock pot

Additional stuff:
Dried veggie soup mix
Carrots
Onions
Bouillon cubes (about 5 - if you want a vegetarian soup, use veggie bouillon)
Parsley
Garlic (in one batch, I used whole cloves of garlic, and in the other batch, granulated garlic)
Bell Peppers (I didn't have these for the first batch)


For my next batch, I plan to use pumpkin. I wish I had a big get-together planned sometime soon, because I have a great big pumpkin that I could use to serve my black bean soup in! Here's what I really want to do:


Disclaimer: This isn't my soup. I stole this picture from a friend who served this soup at a pumpkin carving party the other day.

And here's how I put it together (this is the second batch I made):

I gathered up all my veggies
Soaked the beans overnight, then rinsed and drained them

Gathered my spices

Dumped in about a half a jar of my Grandma's Grains
Cut up my veggies - bell peppers
tomatoes

carrots

aaaand onions.
And then I mixed it all together, and added water just to the point where you could tell I added water:
(Isn't it gorgeous?) And then cooked it all day, and here's the result:
Delicious!