Vegan Sprouted Spelt Lentil and Garbanzo Stew

This will be dinner (or lunch) for the girls tomorrow. It's supposed to be a cold day tomorrow, so I thought a good hearty soup/stew would be welcome. This is made in a slow cooker.


I bought whole spelt on our last trip to Maryland. On Saturday night, I soaked a cup of it, draining the spelt on Sunday, and left it in the pot. Today (Monday), I left it out for the whole day, and the spelt sprouted! I was planning on using it to make spelt minestrone, so the soup is now sprouted spelt minestrone.

Ingredients
1 cup whole spelt grain
2 T extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 carrots, sliced
3 ribs celery, chopped
1 green (or yellow) zucchini, sliced and quartered
1 cup frozen green beans
1 can diced tomatoes with liquid
2 squares vegan low-sodium bouillon
water
3/4 cup dried green lentils
3/4-1 cup dried garbanzos -- 2 cups cooked (*updated)
2 handfuls pine nuts

What to do
Sprout the grain (or don't, but at least soak it overnight).
Put the slow cooker on high. Add the olive oil, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, zucchini, beans, tomatoes and tomato liquid, bouillon, and enough water to cover. Mix together. Pick through the lentils, rinse, and add. Toss in two handfuls of pine nuts. Cook for 2-3 hours on high, then switch to low and cook overnight. In the morning, turn the slow cooker to warm.
Meanwhile, soak the garbanzos overnight. Cook in a pressure cooker in the morning, and add 1 to 1 1/2 cups garbanzos to the slow cooker. (This is my tomorrow-morning-step.)
(I'm actually soaking 1 1/2 cups dried garbanzos to make extra to freeze for future meals. 1 1/2 cups dried garbanzos should cook up to at least 4 1/2 cups garbanzos, maybe more.)

More tomorrow on this soup.

Update: This is not a soup. It is a stew. A thick and hearty stew. I also updated the amount of garbanzos -- Jacqui and I decided to add two cups of cooked beans this morning after I pressured cooked the beans. We both thought that the stew needed more of these super delish beans!

I renamed this stew. It's not really a minestrone anymore. It's a pure stew. I brought some for lunch, so a blackberry photo will be added shortly. :)

Update: photos up. As usual, my blackberry photos aren't too good. The soup tastes better than it looks. It's a little tangy, and quite filling. This thermos filled me up for lunch.

Traveling Prep

Preparing for our trip down to Maryland (we leave tonight after dinner!), I needed to save some veggies that were sitting in the fridge.

I had a bunch (two bunches!) of organic celery (from the store) and four cute organic sweet peppers (from my organic farmer's stand).

I learned through the magic of google that you can freeze celery, so I washed and chopped up all the celery and put it in the freezer. (I also learned that celery loses its crispiness when frozen, but fortunately, I only use it in soups or stews, where it loses its crispiness anyway, so freezing is ok for me.)

I then halved, de-seeded, and cut into strips the yummy sweet peppers. My four peppers were red, red and yellow, yellow and green, and red and orange. J and I can eat them in the car or today or whenever (they will travel with us to Maryland). The photo is one of the yummy red peppers -- so cute and so sweet. Photo taken this time with my cell phone (the blackberry photo looked *really* horrible. Not that I'm claiming my cell phone photo is anything to write home about, but it's so much better than the other photo).

I also juiced my lime and lemons and froze the juice in one of those cute Ikea ice cube molds. This one was hot pink with flower shapes. J's been carrying it around like her new favorite toy, but I did this late at night, so she wasn't there to get all snippy with me for taking her pink tray! :P


Before we leave tonight, I need to do something about this huge squash I got from the organic farmer's stand. I noticed this morning (as I never left the apt) that it was starting to grow a white mold around the blossom end. I will have to search google and blogs to see what I can do to save it.