Happy Saturday!! I hope you are all staying nice and warm this chilly chilly day! If you’re like me, you’ll be staying in tonight and changing into your pjs a little early because it’s just too cold out to do anything but curl up on the couch and be cozy. Am I right?! 🙂 This recipe is perfect for your staying in cozy nights, we seriously LOVED it and it was a dinner for both of us and 3 lunches for Riley and I! I love when my leftovers go a long way, takes a little stress off of the lunch meal planning, agreed? Shout out to Post Punk Kitchen for the original recipe, which you can check out, here!

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2-3 tomatoes, chopped
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup quinoa
• 1 cup carrots, chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cups vegetable broth, divided
• 2 15oz cans black beans
• 1/2 cup cilantro, additional to garnish-optional
• shredded mexican cheese to garnish-optional
• 1 avocado, sliced to garnish-optional
• Tortilla chips for serving

Directions:

1. Pre-heat a large pot over medium heat. Saute onion in olive oil with a pinch of salt for about 5 minutes, until clear. Add garlic and saute with onion for a few seconds.
2. Add tomato, red pepper, cumin, oregano and red pepper flakes and cook for a few minutes to soften the tomatoes and the pepper.
3. Add quinoa, carrots and bay leaves, and 2 cups of the,broth. Cover and bring to a boil, let boil for 5 minutes.
4. Add the remainder of the broth, the  black beans (with half their amount of liquid) and the cilantro. Cover and bring back to a boil, then remove the lid and lower the heat to low and let simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Season to taste and let stand for 10 minutes.
6. Remove bay leave and serve immediately garnished with cheese, cilantro and avocado slices. Chips on the side. We added a little additional pepper on top just because we love pepper on everything.

We really liked the flavor in this soup and it was almost a mix of Italian and Mexican, IMO. I think next time I will also add in a cup of corn just for an additional delish ingredient. I ate it 4 days straight and was still obsessed with it. Sidenote: it’s not as spicy as you might think and I would potentially increase the red pepper flakes next time as well. 🙂 Also if you haven’t figured out yet, we looove soup so if you have any recipes you’re loving these days, please comment below and share the wealth!

Have a wonderful and restful weekend! Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo,

Madelyn