another beautiful day here. outdoor play in the sunshine...what could be better? handing off the tax return!!! something to celebrate.

another new soup, i can't wait to have these last two soups in the height of the summer with all the wonderful fresh local green veggies. i am hoping to start eating in season beginning this summer. i've been reading barbara kingsolver's book animal, vegetable miracle again. i started it about 3 years ago when we moved i lost the book. i took the book on cd out of the library last month and i just love it, her family is so inspiring. i think this book should be required reading for anyone who eats!

this recipe is adapted from multi-bean medley created by the american institute for cancer research they have some nice recipes there. i have changed this recipe a bit, it only called for 1 cup of broth but i wanted it to be more like a soup so i added about 5 cups of broth and modified a few other things.

multi-bean medley soup

1/2 pound of any type of green beans, trimmed and halved crosswise

1 pound bag frozen shelled edamame

2 tsp olive oil

5 green onions, sliced thin you can take it pretty far into the green

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

fresh rosemary sprigs to taste (i would have loved this but my love does not love rosemary)

1 can of small white beans, rinsed and drained

1 carrot, diced

1 celery rib, diced

5 cups of veggie or chicken broth (we were thinking this might be good with miso broth)

freshly ground pepper to taste

fresh parsley to garnish

we also added some sriracha sauce because we seem to put that in all of our brothy soups.

~bring 2 medium pots of salted water to a boil. add the green beans to one and edamame to the other. cook until they are just tender. drain and drop in an ice bath until they are cool then drain again. set aside.

~in your favorite soup pot, heat olive oil, add onions, garlic, bay leaf and rosemary. cook over low heat stirring until the onion is soft about 5 minutes.

~add white beans, carrots, celery and stock. bring to a simmer and cook, covered for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

~add green beans and edamame and simmer uncovered until heated through.

~season to taste with pepper, discard bay leaf and rosemary sprigs. finish with parsley.

honest pretzels by mollie katzen we have been wanting to make these for a while and today was the day!

this has many steps and takes a while. as with all recipes it takes me 3 times as long as the recipe calls for. i did have some trouble with the dough it seemed very sticky. i tried to knead it and it just stuck to my hands so i tossed it back into the kitchen aid and just added a little more flour and let it run for a few minutes. i did not get the full zen experience of kneading by hand nor did i get the anxiety of the dough sticking to my hands and not getting to where i needed it to be.

here is a little a note to those who have not made homemade dough before.

i had an a-ha! moment the other day when i was listening to animal, vegetable, miracle they were talking about making bread in the kitchen aid. i am just starting to learn to make bread at home and all the recipes say to mix the ingredients in a food processor, my food processor groans when i do this. so of course the power house kitchen aid with the dough beater (a-ha!) that must be what that dough beater is for! well this is great but i am sure that most have already figured this out.

well the pretzels were pretty tasty. i think that we had a little too much water in the pot and it did not stay hot enough. next time we'll use a little less water and our widest soup pot.

my daughter told me "they were pretty good for a first try" i guess they were since she had three and probably would have had 6 if we did not stop her.

we tried a few rolled out in cinnamon and sugar instead of flour and then topped with cinnamon and sugar...pretty tasty.

we tried one with fresh shredded parmesan cheese...we were sorry that we only had one of those.

we served them with local mustard and yummy local honey.

as with most of mollie katzen's recipes...another success.