I made up a soup.

The soup was what I would consider a hippie soup: I made up the recipe to use up a tomato surplus, and because it is vegan and contains beans, kale, and a whole grain, you can eat it for a meal and feel quite full and self-righteous. But also like maybe in your heart of hearts you would rather be eating something else?

Actually, the recipe, though improvised, is not unlike a farro-white bean soup from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen (book highly recommended), but with spelt freekeh instead of farro and borlotti beans instead of white beans. Here's what I did: I soaked beans overnight. Then I cooked them with some carrots, celery, parsley stems, bay leaf, onion stuck with cloves, salt, salt, black peppercorns, and a branch of thyme. I peeled some tomatoes by dropping them in boiling water for a few seconds. I soaked the freekeh in cold water while I chopped a lot of onions. Then sauteed the onions in olive oil with carrots and celery and garlic and some more thyme and parsley. While that was cooking I chopped up the tomatoes and also some lacinato kale, which I then added, along with the freekeh, to the pot. I let the tomato cook down a little bit, and then I filled the pot up with bean broth, brought it to a boil, and then simmered til the freekeh was soft and cooked through, which took maybe 40 minutes. If I were doing this again, I would want more beans and less freekeh. It turns out that freekeh gains quite a lot of volume as it cooks, and a little bit goes a long way.

A different Deborah Madison cookbook, Local Flavors, suggested that the tomato peels could be fried til crisp to make a beautiful garnish, which I would really like to try. I did save the tomato peels before, and they were very pretty, but in the end I was having busy weekend and it didn't seem totally essential, so I skipped it. Hippies don't always have great follow-through. But someday!

I think Deborah Madison is great. I learned about freekeh here.