NOTE TO SELF:  Cooking dinner in the winter makes for crappy food photos.  No natural light = BLAH.

I stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest and realized that (gasp!) I had everything I needed to make it at home.  This almost NEVER happens, and I figured it could easily be adapted to be vegan-friendly.  I was right (score!), and now we’ve happily scarfed this down for dinner three or four times in the last three weeks.

When I was a kid, I had zero idea that you could MAKE soup; as far as I was concerned, it came from a can.  We always had my grandmother’s vegetable soup in the winter, but it was an all-day shindig… There was boiling and stewing and waiting and waiting… Smelling and smelling it all day long until it was finally dinnertime.  It wasn’t until I was in junior high when my mom started making other kinds of soup for dinner; soup that only took a half hour to make.  And less to eat.

This soup is a quickie; and pretty hard to mess up.  The only real time-consuming part is popping garbanzo beans from their shells.  This is probably unnecessary for most of the world; I just can’t help being grossed out by the shells…  It reminds me of the molted cicada shells that populated a few summers of my childhood.  If you’ve had the pleasure of living in the midwest during a cicada summer, you know what I mean.  If not, trust me; count yourself among the lucky ones.

This isn’t good banter for a food-related post…  Moving on….

After sauteing green onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil for a few minutes, popping in tomatoes, beans, seasoning, and stock, it just sits there simmering away for twenty minutes.

We cube a half an avocado per person and top it with fresh cilantro and a few chopped green onions.  Once the soup is ready, I pour it over the avocados and let it sit for just a few minutes to warm up the avocado.  We’ve also enjoyed this using chicken stock we had in the pantry and it was even better, though not vegan.  If I were honest to my dairy-loving self, I would LOVE to top it with a bit of creme fraiche and some crumbled tortilla chips.  Feel free to do that in my honor.

Avocado-Lime Soup

• 3/4 cup of chopped green onions (about 5, including greens)
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup of chopped tomatoes
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 can of un-salted garbanzo beans, drained and peeled
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp garlic salt
• 3 cups of vegetable stock
• 2 avocados, cubed
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Saute garlic and 2/3 of green onions in olive oil until tender, about 4-5 minutes.  Add tomatoes, garbanzo beans, cumin, garlic salt, lime juice and stock.  Cover and simmer on low for twenty minutes.  Meanwhile, place cubed avocado, remaining green onions and cilantro in individual bowls.  Ladle soup over avocados, allow to sit for three minutes to allow avocado to warm through.  Serve immediately.

The first time I made this, Nathan was surprised…  “Wow.  This is like, actually really good.”  His confidence in my culinary prowess is inspiring, no?

Finn isn’t much for avocados or lime, but Alice is one happy customer.  And that makes me happy.