White Bean with Spinach Soup (by Bethenny)

I'm not usually much of a soup person, but we spent this past weekend on Whidbey Island with weather like this:

...and came back to more rainy, gray drizzle and showers so I really felt like trying a new soup recipe. I recently bought Bethenny Frankel's The Skinnygirl Dish, so decided to try out the White Bean with Spinach Soup on page 116.

Here's my adaptation - I didn't quite follow instructions completely...

You need all this, plus an onion and a bay leaf:

1 tsp olive oil

1 yellow onion (I was out but luckily had some frozen chopped onion - good in a pinch!)

1 clove garlic

red bell pepper (Bethenny says use 1/2; I used a whole one)

4 cups vegetable broth

1 can of white beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups chopped fresh spinach

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

Heat the olive oil and saute the onions, then garlic & red pepper:

Add the broth, white beans, spinach, bay leaf, salt & pepper, and simmer for about 20 minutes. At this point Bethenny instructs you to remove the bay leaf and the garlic... well, I couldn't find the bay leaf after everything had cooked down and I had minced the garlic... next time I'll probably just omit the bay leaf and use a little less garlic. (update: you don't want to eat a dried bay leaf - so make sure to pull it out before you blend this up! thanks to Diana Draw for the comment :) )

You then puree with an immersion blender, but I poured everything into my Cuisinart. It came out great and I'll make it again (with my two adjustments).

I love how Bethenny includes "use what you have" variations for her recipes - for this one she had five variation suggestions. I definitely look forward to trying many more recipes from this book.

Wow... Wednesday already... hope everyone is having a nice week. My Tory Burch Tevin Mini Bag arrived so review on that coming up soon!

xoxo