A REAL Veggie Dish… Tuscan White Bean Soup with Kale

So, I’ve received just a tiny bit of flack for featuring a veggie dish that contained prosciutto in the Veggie Dinners post and sought to rectify the situation. In my defense, the second recipe was strictly vegetarian, but I understand that there is a ‘truth-in-advertising’ issue with a post titled “Veggie Dinners” that features prosciutto. Lest I invoke the wrath of any more vegetarians, I will own that the base of this soup is a chicken stock – because that is what I always have on hand – but vegetable stock could easily be used as a substitute.

Tuscan White Bean Soup is a recipe that is both categorically healthy – carrots, white beans, and kale constitute its base – and all succor, warmth, and comfort. It is not every recipe that can soothe both the spirit and the body, but this recipe does so perfectly.

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Delicious Veggie Dinners

If you are at all familiar with Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, you’ve likely heard his mantra, “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It is a shockingly simple prescription for health, and its efficacy can be assumed by applying the proof of contradiction principle or inverting the mantra: If one eats a diet of processed food products, a tremendous amount of them, and little produce, the health picture looks grim.

It seems unlikely that someone who regularly extols the virtues of beef ribs, sausages, and a perfectly medium-rare steak would adhere to this maxim, but I am a firm believer that 1 or 2 mostly veggie dinners each week stabilizes weight – or, at least, prevents it from reaching gargantuan proportions. Veggie dinners make me feel, in mind if not in body, more healthful, and they are so agreeably easy and quick to make on a frantic weeknight.

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