Soooup!

Tonight I was just in the mood for soup.  I am not sure why, since it is the warmest day we have had in months, but maybe it is just that I adore all soups, and I always have. On our first date, Mark took me to a little soup restaurant because he said he had noticed that I liked to eat "mush."  With soup and mashed potatoes on the top of my food lists, I guess he is right.  I was surprised to realize that so far in this 3 months of my cooking resolution, I had not attempted a single soup!  So tonight was the day.

Mark and I went to Stop and Shop without a real plan in mind, but knowing that we were low on time.  He grabbed two of his beloved marinated pork loins, and I quickly browsed one of my favorite cooking blogs and came up with a tortellini soup with beans and chard.  Perfect: a meatless soup with tortellinis! We grabbed what we needed andwent home, and I bet we were eating close to an hour later.  It was pretty quick, pretty delicious, and pretty beautiful (the chard is the most gorgeous deep green color, and I am so glad I got multicolored tortellini!).  Definitely a hit. 

I doubled the cans of beans, since 1 can in a big pot of soup really is not enough protein (I ended up not having 2 cans of cannelinis, so the other can was pink beans), and I also doubled the tortellinis beause I adore them.  I realize this sort of diminishes the healthiness of the soup, but I did not add the parmesan rind (simply because I didn't have one) and so I claim that it evened out.  Mark grated a little fresh parmesan on our bowls of soup, and it was pretty damn great.  Mom had seconds!  That's always a great sign. It ended up just being the 3 of us home, so there is plenty for me to take to school tomorrow.  One more day till the weekend, and I have some rather amazing things planned :)

Recipe:
Tortellini soup with beans and chard