I love soup

It's true. I love soup. I could eat it on a daily basis. It's nutritious, and delicious, easy to make and makes your house smell homey and inviting. Usually during the winter, I make at least one pot of soup a week. So imagine my delight, when I drew not one, but two soups in this most recent batch of recipes! Soups are easy. Usually the only effort put into making soup is throwing your ingredients into a pot and let it simmer away. The clean-up is minimal, and you can fake out your diners to think you've slaved away all day.

Last night I made recipe number 99 from Rachel Ray's 365: No Repeats cookbook, Chicken, Corn, and Black Bean Stoup. Everything I said previously held true. It was quick, easy, smelled delicious, and filled us up to the brim! I served it along side a mexi salad (greens with corn, cheese, avocado, tomato and salsa to dress it) and some jalapeno poppers (the kind you find in the freezer section of the grocery store). Aah, my bowl runnith over.

A word of warning to those who don't like it hot (spicy that is), this is a bit of a fiery soup. This calls for a chipotle chili pepper in adobo sauce. This is a smoked jalapeno which just gets more and more hot through the process. You could do a couple of things to tame the fire. Instead of adding the pepper you could add some smokey chili powder or chipotle flavored hot sauce (Tabasco makes a version of this). This is infinitely easier to add to suit your spice level (add until its hot enough). You could also add fresh (or canned) jalapenos, which are less spicy than the chipotle version. I loved it the way it was, but there are lesser spice-tolerant people in my family and the next time I make this I will tone down the spice to suit their tender tongues.

How do you feel about soup? Are you an 'eat it every day' or only an 'only when its cold' kinda person. Will you eat it for a meal or only as an appetizer? Curious minds want to know...