What's for dinner tonight?: Soup is Good Food

Wednesday I had to travel to the Couve for work, and on days like this I have been trying use my slow cooker. It has been a lot of trial and error, and this week was no different.

This weeks challenge: Packaged Soup Mix.

Now I don't normally buy anything packaged or processed, but considering I would be the "process" (cooking the soup), and the only "packaging" was the bag containing the beans, seasoning, and pasta - it couldn't be THAT bad for you. Right? Note: If you eat a lot of packaged foods please accept my sincerest apology if I offended you in anyway.

I think this soup mix had me at "hello" because (1) it was soup - I love soup, (2) it was on sale - I love a good sale, (3) I had a World Market coupon - I love saving money on top of a good sale, and (4) if gave me yet another excuse to bust out the slow cooker - I love using all of my kitchen appliances.

Hello Gorgeous.

The mix itself comes with stove top directions, which lead me to believe it could easily translate to the slow cooker. Of course, as with most of my cooking it truly was an experiment.

The mix consists of three components: beans, seasoning, and pasta (all perfectly portioned and segregated I might add). The responsibility of the cook (yours truly) is to add onions, carrots, celery, water, broth, and canned tomatoes. If you follow the package directions the soup essentially simmers for 2 1/2 to 3 hours on the stove, and you add the pasta the last 15 minutes of cooking. Not bad - if you have the time to sit with soup simmering on your stove top. With a slow cooker, however, the possibilities are endless.

In preparation (and because I'm super anal - can you say anal on a cooking blog???) I chopped and diced my onion, carrot and celery Tuesday night. Wednesday morning (between make up application and breakfast consumption), I sauteed the veggies, just as you would if you were following the stove top cooking directions.

There is NOTHING better than the smell of onions, celery, and carrots cooking on the stove.

Once softened I placed the veggies in my slow cooker, along with the soup mix, seasoning packet, canned tomatoes, water and vegetable broth.

Now I have to be honest and tell you that I have a really basic slow cooker. It has three settings: Off, Low, and High. No clock/timer. No nothin'. I have a Christmas tree timer hooked up to my slow cooker, which allows me to "program" it to turn on while I'm at work, and to cook for the allotted time needed. We are so high tech in our house, Bill Gates would be jealous.

I set the timer to start at 1 p.m. knowing I would be able to check on the progress around 4:30 p.m. I set the temperature to LOW.

When I came home at 4:30 p.m., I could actually smell the soup in my garage. I walked in, and instantly felt the warmth of pasta fagioli wafting through my house. I could see the slow cooker simmering away, and could not wait to taste it's bubbly deliciousness. It had to taste as good as it smelled. Unfortunately, instead of tasting the smooth creamy texture of the beans, all I got was a mouthful of partially cooked starchy rocks. Bleck.

Knowing I still had a good two hours before dinner time, I cranked up the heat to HIGH, and headed to the gym. I left a note for the huz to add the bag of pasta to the soup at 6:15 p.m. hoping that by the time I got home the pasta and beans would be cooked. I had tremendous faith in the slow cooker, and the huz.

When I returned at 6:40 I was pleasantly surprised to find that the soup was not only cooked to perfection, but the huz had cooked his buffalo chicken wings as well. I'm in love (slow cooker or the huz, you decide).