Paring Down the Pantry: White Bean and Pesto Soup

I don't understand it. I hardly spend any money on groceries, yet my pantry, which includes freezer, fridge, and REAL pantry, is STUFFED. I am aware that Thanksgiving is only about 6 weeks away.

I love Thanksgiving. It is a holiday based on a family meal. It is marked by great sales on staple foods. It yields wonderful leftovers, including and especially, broth.

As I did last spring, I am limiting my expenditures to $25.00/week, to force a paring down.* Mr. FS and I have the day off, so we looked through the freezer: steak, meatballs,various vegetables, tons of ratatouille from garden eggplant, tons of lemon juice from tree, shrimp, and, WHAT'S THAT? How embarrassing: BROTH from November 2009. We defrosted it and it was OK. We also found some frozen white beans.

I whirled the possibilities around: white bean soup with lemon, white beans with shrimp (a nouveau-Creole dish that proved somewhat disappointing), white bean bruschetta, white beans with tuna, eventually settling on WHITE BEAN SOUP with PESTO.

This is from a seemingly forgotten cookbook author: Perla Meyers, whose first book
The Seasonal Kitchen made a huge splash. Yes, you can now buy it for a mere 8 cents plus shipping on Amazon. How I wanted that book, first published when I was in college.

The white bean soup is from another book, The Peasant Kitchen. (OMG someone is selling this on Amazon for $247! Sadly--for me--there are other versions available for a penny).

I won't give you the exact recipe, since I didn't have the right amount of anything. I threw into a pot some of those caramelized onions from my slow cooker, added the frozen white beans, broke off a chunk of frozen stock, and added a few canned tomatoes. After a while, I pureed it with my trusty immersion blender. Then I cooked a few handfuls of macaroni in the puree. When that was done, I added some PESTO we had frozen last month.

Note that because everything was either frozen or canned, I didn't have any prep work. Such is the blessing of the freezer/pantry.

Do you ever cook like this? Send me a list of your ingredients and I'll see what I can come up with.

*No sooner did I make a vow than I broke it. I just ordered a 50 lb. sack of oat groats.