white bean and carrot soup

The other day, the weather man said it was supposed to rain all day. Luckily, he was wrong and it stopped and was just cloudy all day. I took the train a couple of stops up to Minoo, just to walk around.At the train station, they had their annual poster which shows the progress of the fall foliage at different parks around Osaka, Hyogo and Kyoto.

There are four boxes at the bottom of each destination. The green leaf means that they haven't started to change colors, the yellow leaf means that it has started. The next box is for the red leaf which means it is peak foliage viewing and the last box is for the brown leaf which means that the leaves are starting to brown and fall off the trees. They also post the fares from that station to the destinations, the left fare is for adults and the right fare are for children. I think it will be a couple more weeks before we'll be able to see some changing colors.

Dinner was a white bean and carrot soup from this book. I've been enjoying many recipes from this book. Most of the recipes are quite easy. It was a hearty and nice way to warm up.

White bean and carrot soup adapted from "Little Book of Soup": Serves 4
15 oz (425g) canned white bean, drained and rinsed
400g canned whole tomatoes
1/2 onion, chopped
2 small carrots sliced thinly
1 consomme cube
300ml (about 1.5 cups) water
3 tablespoons olive oil
sprigs of parsley
salt and pepper to taste
boule bread (a country style bread), sourdough or rye bread

Put the onion and carrots into a pot, use 2 tablespoons of the oil and saute for 3 minutes.
Add the water and consomme cube.
Add the tomatoes and beans, simmer for 20 minutes.
Using a food processor, whiz half of the soup.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Put a slice of bread into the bottom of the bowl. Drizzle part of the remaining oil onto the bread, sprinkle some salt and pour the hot soup on top.
Enjoy!

NOTES: this soup called for the beans to be soaked for several hours, but I took a short cut with the canned. Also it called for couple of cloves of garlic, but since it is a weekday and Satoshi's is self-conscious about garlic breath at work, I didn't add any in. Instead I added the onion, though I think if I did add the garlic, it would added another layer of flavor to this soup. I think the next time I eat this, I'm going to cut the toasted bread into cubes and throw it on top instead of having it at the bottom of the bowl, I didn't like the mushy bread texture.

If you missed the other recipes that I've tried from this book, here they are:
Curried Sweet Potato Soup
Roast Pumpkin Soup, Onion and Garlic Soup
Chestnut and Chorizo Soup
Get ready...It's soup season!