The best effing soup ever, y'all

Oh it's this one.

Ohh yes. Not my best photo ever but I could only manage one take before I started lapping this stuff straight out of the bowl. OK not really, but it really is so so so good. I served it to my friends as the main course at a dinner party once, even though it is not the all-time heartiest of soups. Garlic, rosemary, tomatoes, chickpeas -- that's pretty much it.

Due to my incredible lack of fundage right now I'm trying to be less spendy on my groceries. This is a chronic problem -- grocery shopping is kind of a hobby, and I tend to fill my fridge and pantry with stuff I may one day use, you know, when I get around to the kind of recipes that require either equipment I don't have yet or some vast amount of time or messiness. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I've been buying lots of dry beans, especially since a couple of weeks ago when I finally figured out how to use the pressure cooker. This thing is genius! It cooks beans in a crazy short time and they come out amazing. Plus it's a badass gadget and if used incorrectly it can explode like a delicious aromatic bomb. So there's the danger element.

And now, where I had previously hated cooking beans because I didn't have the patience to cook them until they are actually done (sometimes up to 3 hours, sheesh!), now I love it because I get to use my cool gadget and I am able to do it to my satisfaction in a half hour or less.

So, I came home from work today a half hour or so later than usual, and it was on. I pressure cooked the chickpeas, plus the equivalent of another can to throw in the freezer. Washed some dishes (I am turning over a new leaf vis-a-vis my out of control kitchen clutter) and then threw on the soup. This is a super quick soup so it's really easy to do after work if you start with already-cooked chickpeas. And if you happen to have a loaf of fresh crusty bread of some kind to dip in it, that puts it way over the top. I made some extra-crispy toast from my regular trader joe's sprouty bread and that also did the job.

Hooray for cold, wet days and the tasty warm meals they require. I am in a pretty terrific mood because I worked my butt off today and felt like I had really accomplished some things (in advance of meeting with my reportedly ultra hardcore new boss who returns tomorrow from a sabbatical). And I reconnected with a friend who I've been meaning to hang out with, so there are lunch plans happening, and I've got 2 alterna-Nutcracker Christmas shows in a row the next couple of days. (Thursday, Friday) Yay Christmas. Yay nearly-naked friends dancing to Christmas music.