Denise Resting

Blog

  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    What I’m grateful for going into this week:

    1. I’m starting the week with food prepped, thanks to my husband taking B out for a couple hours yesterday afternoon. My week always feels less hectic when my ability to eat healthy food doesn’t depend on finding the time to cook it while my toddler cries because I’m not drawing him pictures of stingrays and manta rays and spotted eagle rays.

    2. My little backyard. It’s small, but it’s big enough for a few chairs, a few things for B to play with and a little bit of space for him to run around. We basically don’t step foot out there from November through March, so when spring comes around it’s like our house suddenly gets bigger – we have one more space we can occupy without actually going anywhere.

    3. The number of playgrounds we can walk to. I grew up in a very small town and there were two playgrounds – one in the “downtown” park, and one at the elementary school. We live within reasonable walking distance of at least ten. The other day I drove to a nearby house to pick up something that someone was giving away, and saw yet another playground that I hadn’t even known was there, just a mile from our house.

    4. The cardigan I’ve been crocheting since September is almost finished. It has been such a slog, has felt like it would never end, that my motivation to keep working on it has been basically nonexistent. But yesterday I finished the ribbing on one of the wrists, and today I should be able to finish the other wrist. That will leave the ribbing along the bottom, the front and the neck, and it’s the same technique as the wrists so I feel like I have it figured out now. I’m starting to think maybe I can finish it before our trip at the end of the month? Possibly? It’s a nice thought, anyway. It’ll keep me picking up that treacherous hook.

    5. Spring flowers. There are so many beautiful flowering trees everywhere I look right now, and tulips have finally been opening this past week. It all feels so cheerful. I know these particular flowers will be short-lived, and then it will be irises and whatever else comes next, and those will be beautiful too, but the first flowers of spring are my absolute favorite because, in Seattle, they come after a stretch of cold, wet darkness so long it feels endless. Spring flowers feel like a beautiful sigh of relief. “You made it,” cherry blossoms say. “You didn’t throw yourself in front of the train this year,” daffodils say.

  • This Year’s Thrifted Clothes

    This Year’s Thrifted Clothes

    I love clothes. It feels good to wear beautiful things that fit well. It brings me joy to wear pretty florals and rich colors, and likewise to feel warm enough when it’s cold and cool enough when it’s warm. I’ve been wearing linen pants this week as the temps have finally started going up, and the breeze through a pair of linen pants on a sunny day is truly delightful.

    For the past few years I’ve made an effort to buy secondhand clothing instead of new whenever possible. When I do buy new, I try to stick to ethically-made clothes in natural fibers, which can be a bit pricey and they should be. A new shirt should never cost ten dollars, and few things irritate me more than seeing a review where somebody claims they didn’t get their money’s worth from a $20 sweater. Ma’am, if you put three of your fingers in that sweater one time then you got your money’s worth. Having spent the past eight months crocheting most of a sweater, something I will likely never do again, and having watched my husband knit a few sweaters, I can assure you that no sweater should cost anything close to $20 simply due to the labor that goes into it. A $20 sweater is going to be junk and it should be junk. And we shouldn’t be buying junk and supporting the constant cranking out of new junk, so please at least just know all of that if you still decide to buy the $20 sweater. Of course, the high prices of ethically made garments are not in everyone’s budget. Fortunately there’s a nearly inexhaustible supply of clothing on the secondhand market.

    Whether new or used, I also try to follow the rule of buying only things I see myself still wearing in five years. This means avoiding trends I’ll no longer want to wear in five years (although shopping secondhand is a great way to try trends), avoiding low-quality pieces unlikely to last five years, and choosing only items that complement my existing wardrobe well enough that I’m unlikely to decide to get rid of it on account of never actually wearing it. With thrifted items, though, I’m willing to accept that sometimes something that seemed really great might not end up working out, and I don’t feel so bad since I was simply giving new life to an already-existing item anyway. In that case, I find a new home for the item and move on.

    I don’t actually love the act of going to a store and browsing, and with a toddler yanking things off hangers it’s damn near impossible to do, so I often turn to Poshmark and Mercari when I’m looking for something. I’m a big fan of these platforms, as well as eBay, because they help unite used items with people who want to continue their use. I also sell on Poshmark and Mercari when I decide something I’ve purchased doesn’t work for me.

    But I have found so many INCREDIBLE items secondhand, and this winter I cashed in some Poshmark earnings on some things I’ve been having a lot of fun wearing. So in the spirit of celebrating secondhand fashion, here the little darlings are:

    Ralph Lauren quilted denim jacket
    Black Mountain fleece jacket
    Woolrich wool cardigan
    Northern Reflections cotton sweater (a favorite brand to find secondhand)
    Northern Reflections wool cardigan
    Northern Reflections wool cardigan
    Northern Reflections cotton cardigan
    Eddie Bauer wool sweater
    Sezane wool cardigan (a favorite modern brand)
    Cat sweatshirt, idk if this thing is homemade or what but I love it

    Usually my interactions on these secondhand platforms are very positive, with lovely people enthusiastic about keeping things out of landfill. I save packing materials and reuse them when I sell something, and people often send nice messages about that. Not every interaction is wonderful, though. Occasionally you run into somebody who inexplicably feels entitled to a luxury shopping experience at half the price. After never receiving a negative review before, I recently received the following review after selling somebody a new-with-tags shirt I bought secondhand but didn’t like the fit of:

    I can say a lot about this woman. I can say she was a pain in the ass from the very beginning, sending me message after message asking what the lowest price I’d take was, and then asking for a lower price even than that. I can say her decision to keep the item rather than dispute the purchase is at odds with her grossly inaccurate review (still three stars though!). I can say her desire for brand-new packaging means she has absolutely zero regard for the environmental impact of anything she does. I can say she has nothing but disdain for the unhoused. But mostly, I can say this review is the most incredible self-own I’ve ever seen. It honestly could have been lifted from an I Think You Should Leave sketch. I only hope that, in time, she’s able to enjoy and love transactions again.

  • Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    This week I…

    • Started attempting to potty train my kid, which meant we stayed at the house all weekend and spent basically no money. My husband ran out to the grocery store, but we went nowhere else. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that.
    • Used a gift card to buy B’s big kid underwear.
    Easter breakfast casserole my husband made
    • Food prepped. I didn’t take photos, but I made big batches of steel cut oats, roasted broccoli and cauliflower, and instant pot collard greens. I had some beans from the freezer and some leftover bread from dinner a couple nights ago that I’ve been trying to use up, too, so I’ve been eating beans with bread for my lunch. I also made a batch of these breakfast cookies to keep in the freezer for B. They’re not the most beautiful cookies ever, but we love them.
    • Made a preschool auction basket with things we already had. All families are asked to provide an item worth at least $50 for the fundraising auction, and I probably would have just contributed a gift card except in the fall I was tasked with being part of a different auction and saw that some of the best performers were baskets of hobby items. We happened to have a duplicate, unused copy of a popular knitting book, so I paired that with a few spare skeins of high-quality wool yarn, a (used) puzzle of cats in space and an unopened candle, and that’s going to be my contribution. Will it be the most popular item? Probably not. Is it more interesting than a $50 gift card to the neighborhood pizza place? Yes, and it saved me $50.
    • Bought Easter eggs and an Easter basket at the dollar store for $4.50 and filled the eggs with little toy bugs I already had. I would have preferred to not buy new plastic items, but we’ll (hopefully) be able to use the basket and eggs year after year so at least that’s something.
    • Didn’t have to buy any gas for our car, as our car is electric and we haven’t bought gas since 2022 (except a couple rentals while traveling). This Iran situation is stressing me the fuck out and gas prices are among the least of my concerns, but it’s nice to not be buying gas right now, or ever.
  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    Things I’m grateful for going into this week:

    1. The weather is finally starting to improve. I’m sure we’ll still have some cool, rainy days, but it feels safe to say we’re done seeing the 30s. The weather this past weekend was beautiful, which was especially nice because we started potty training and were able to spend a lot of time in the back yard and at our neighborhood playground with our little training potty in tow.

    2. I was able to easily re-home a bunch of stuff we no longer needed by posting them for free on our neighborhood’s family-centered Facebook group. I haven’t had much luck giving things away on my local no-buy group – it always takes several tries to find somebody who will actually show up – but this facebook group tends to be pretty reliable. I’ve turned to this facebook group a few times when I’ve wanted to find something but didn’t want to buy new, too. I got my kid’s potty seat and several of his snack and drink containers just by asking the group if anybody had some they didn’t want anymore.

    3. We can lie to our kid. We don’t watch a lot of TV, but he has taken a liking to these short videos that show different kinds of animals and then say what they’re called. For the past six months they’re all he’s been willing to watch. We decided we want to shift his interest, if we can, to things with a bit more of an actual storyline – Trash Truck, Puffin Rock, Bluey, Sesame Street, Thomas and Friends, any of those. We want to keep things low-stim, so no Ms. Rachel or Cocomelon in this house. He has been very hesitant to move from the animal videos, though, so after a recent trip to the Museum of Flight where an out-of-order elevator really caught his attention, we simply told him his animal shows are out-of-order. That made complete sense to him, and it’s been weeks since we watched them.

    4. We love our pediatrician. I really didn’t care for the first doctor we were assigned to, and it had started causing me SO much anxiety before appointments. Our interactions felt strangely hostile, she often gave us information that was inconsistent with information we’d received elsewhere in the clinic (from the dietician, for example), and I always left those appointments feeling like we’d been on the defensive the whole hour. We managed to switch to our current doctor about a year ago and our interactions all feel very positive. We just had B’s three-year checkup, and I really hope he stays with our clinic for a long time.

    5. We happened to have Pepto-Bismol on hand when I desperately needed it yesterday. I’m on a temporary medication that can cause nausea, and was hit yesterday evening with the worst nausea I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t know it was even possible to throw up that much. I was starting to think I’d need to get myself to urgent care, but I also didn’t think it would be possible for me to leave the bathroom. Over-the-counter meds tend to expire before ever getting used up in our house, and then they don’t get replaced because we never use them, so I didn’t think we had anything I could take. My husband found some Pepto-Bismol in the downstairs bathroom, and it felt like a gift from a God I don’t even believe in. Within 20 minutes of taking it I felt much, much better. Lesson learned. We will always have Pepto on hand. Even if we have to throw out three expired bottles before anyone needs it, we will always have it.

  • Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    This week I…

    • Food prepped, like every week. This week I cooked a big batch of steel-cut oats, Spanish garbanzo beans with spinach, sautéed garlic kale, roasted cauliflower and roasted sweet potatoes. Last night I also cooked a big batch of lentil and mushroom stew, mixed it with mashed potatoes, baked it in a casserole dish and then cut into individual servings to freeze for B. I like to have a few things in the freezer that I can pull out to give him for lunch.

    Last night we ate some baked potatoes loaded with ranch dressing and buffalo tofu, with some garlic kale on the side, and we have leftovers to eat the same thing tonight. Tomorrow my husband will cook collard greens, cornbread and a big pot of beans and we’ll eat that through the weekend.

    • Saved money at a birthday party by not drinking. I’ve been avoiding booze for most of the year, primarily in an effort to lose a few pounds, but it’s saving a few dollars here-and-there as well. Last Saturday a good friend had a birthday party at a drag brunch, which was quite expensive on its own – $72 for entrance, which included food and one drink (which I donated to the birthday boy), and another $20 for tipping the queens, but if I’d been drinking I likely would have spent another $30. I did still tip the staff as if I’d been buying drinks, because it’s a dick move to take up somebody’s table all day, barely spending anything but keeping them from having any other customers, and then tip a standard percentage on your minuscule tab.
    • Took B to a free rescue farm Sunday morning, although we did pay the $5 donation to get a bucket of food to feed the animals. As B had zero interest in feeding the animals, we may skip that part next time. He had fun with the goats, but mostly he wanted to sit in the playhouse and declare that it was his house and not ours.
    • Took B to gymnastics open play on a day when admission cost just $2 and two cans of food for the local food bank, rather than the usual $10. Even with a punch card it works out to be $7 per visit, so two dollars and two cans of beans is definitely cheaper. However, that comes at the cost of it being very crowded, and he had a few collisions with older kids sprinting all over the place while their parents were who-the-fuck-knows-where. That, combined with it not really being at a good time of day for us anyway, means we probably won’t be in a hurry to go back. Which is kind of a bummer, because he’s finally reaching an age where he can play intentionally with a lot of the equipment and he loves going.
    • Stretched some protein powder by only using half-servings. I have mixed feelings about protein powder, because I prefer to keep my food as minimally-processed as possible. And I’m of the opinion that most people are getting PLENTY of protein, and that if we went out of our way to get fiber the same way we go out of our way to get protein we’d all be much healthier. But I’m trying to stay in a calorie deficit right now, and in the hopes of preserving muscle mass I’ve decided to add a little chocolate protein powder to my oatmeal instead of the cocoa powder I’d been adding. So I bought a bag of Costco-brand chocolate protein powder (using a shop-card balance), and I’ve been weighing out half-sized servings because I don’t feel like I need to add 25 grams of protein to my oats. All that is to say the bag will last me twice as long. And a fun little anecdote – there’s been a lot of press about protein powders containing high levels of heavy metals, but I saw a Reddit comment from a guy who works in a lab and tested the Kirkland brand protein powder himself, and he claims the levels were all well within acceptable ranges. But whatever levels of heavy metals might be there, I’m only getting half of those at a time, too.
    • Waited to buy ice cream until it went on sale. We usually buy store-brand ice cream, which we find just as delightful as any other. But I happened to notice Tillamook’s German chocolate cake flavor while grocery shopping last weekend, a flavor I hadn’t seen before, and I’ve always loved German chocolate cake. It was always my grandpa’s favorite kind of cake, and my mom made it every year for his birthday. I decided to wait until it went on sale to buy it, and lo and behold, it went on sale this week. I grabbed some yesterday when I did our mid-week fruit run. Calorie deficit or no calorie deficit, I’m going to fit some ice cream in.

  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    Things I’m grateful for going into this week:

    1. Starting the week with my food already prepped. Yesterday my husband took B out for about an hour and a half, and I used that time to furiously cook. It makes the whole week feel better.

    2. That my kid no longer seems disastrously tired in the evening when he doesn’t nap. A couple weeks ago I included in my gratitude post that he was back to napping every day, and then he immediately stopped napping again. With a kid, all you can count on is that you can’t count on anything. Anyway, previously when he didn’t nap he was a mess by bedtime. Now he seems fine. So I guess whatever he decides to do each day is fine with me.

    3. Spring flowers. It has still been frigid and often wet, but spring flowers give me hope that better weather is around the corner.

    4. A few recent opportunities to hang out with grown-ups. Last Thursday, after a preschool meeting, I hung out with some of the moms until midnight. MIDNIGHT. I died the next day and I’m dead now, but it was fun. Then on Saturday my ghost went to a drag brunch for a friend’s birthday.

    5. In a few short weeks we’ll be traveling to San Diego. This morning when the boy, the dog and I went for a walk it was 35 degrees and my fingers were so cold they hurt by the time we got back. It will be April in two days. THIS IS NOT OKAY. It’s really got me looking forward to our upcoming vacation.

  • Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    Thursday Thrifty Roundup

    This past weekend we had a relatively low-cost birthday party for my son, who turned three! Actually we had two parties – Saturday afternoon we invited some families with kids over to play at a playground near our house, and Saturday evening we had some old family friends over for dinner. Here’s what we did to make it relatively low-cost (and low waste):

    • First, the location. A playground is free, and we’re lucky to live near this particular playground because it’s somewhat hidden and always empty. We had the place to ourselves, so it almost felt like we rented a place.
    • We made the food ourselves. It’s a lot cheaper to buy, for example, blocks of cheese and slice them than it is to buy a party tray. Same goes for fruit and veggies, and of course cake. We prepped our own big fruit bowl, vegetable tray and cheese tray. We also made French onion dip, a chocolate bundt cake and vanilla cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting. We bought hummus and big bags of pretzel thins and pita chips. All the food for this party came from Costco and was paid for using our shop card balance. For the grown-up party later, my husband cooked corned beef with potatoes, carrots and potatoes – all on sale at Safeway for St. Patrick’s Day – and I made a triple chocolate mousse cake. We did candles and singing with that cake.
    • Bought a two-pack of good-quality folding tables from Costco using our shop card balance. We like to entertain, so the tables will be used often and I hope they last decades.
    • Found second-hand tablecloths. The bird tablecloth is actually a shower curtain I found on my no-buy group.
    • Used upcycled cloth napkins.
    • Instead of using disposable cutlery I found a big bag of forks at Good Will for like $1.99, and these will be our party forks forever.
    • I got all these flamingo plates second-hand and we used them – and will continue to use them – instead of paper plates. This definitely cost more up front, but I assume will pay off down the road, plus it’s way more fun and results in less stuff being thrown away.
    • Nothing we brought was landfill, so to keep things out of the playground trash cans we set out containers under the table for compost, dishes, cloth napkins and cans. Not specifically thrifty, but Earth-friendly.
    • We bought second-hand toys for his presents. He’s still only three and is happy to receive basically anything, so we got this big box of miscellaneous Duplo pieces from OfferUp and a few of his recent favorite library books from Thriftbooks. The few specific new things we wanted for him we put on a list for any family members who asked, so he got a few new toys too.
    • We used up the leftover party food throughout the week. We sautéed the leftover bell peppers and used the leftover cheese to make quesadillas for dinner for two nights. The fruit got used up as snacks, and I’m working my way through the snap peas. The pretzel thins and pita chips are stored in airtight bags for later, and I’m going to freeze the leftover hummus in small cubes to use as sandwich spread.

    And a few things not birthday-related:

    • We used up the punchcard we bought two years ago for the gymnastics play hour. We have also now aged out of the best weekly time slot, so I won’t be buying another.
    • I decorated our downstairs bathroom wall with mostly thrifted or free things. The only thing not thrifted or free is the print of the naked lady, which we bought years ago at a local gallery. Her frame, though, was thrifted.
    • We had to replace our dishwasher, which is not thirfty. While we were researching replacement options, we saw this one on a good sale price. We weren’t ready to commit, so we missed that sale, but when we decided this was the one we wanted it was on a sale that wasn’t quite as good, so we waited until we saw the lower price come back. It only took one extra week, and it saved us $50. We also went with a “dumb” dishwasher, which is cheaper and there’s less that can go wrong. We don’t need the features.
    • I had a bunch of bananas that needed to be used up or tossed out, so I used them all to make a big batch of freezer pancakes for B. The pancakes I make – made just of bananas, oats, eggs, water and any add-ins – are great to pack with us when we’re out all day and want to bring food with real nutritional value. I made half with blueberries and the other half with cocoa powder and sprinkles. It used up the bananas and gave us something we needed.
    • I food-prepped, like always. I have some stuff to use up for my lunches, but I made a big batch of oatmeal, roasted broccoli, roasted carrots, sautéed green beans and instant pot collard greens to get us through the week.
  • Monday Gratitude

    Monday Gratitude

    I’m posting this on a Tuesday because our son turned three on Saturday and my husband took yesterday off to make it a three-day weekend. So basically, today is my Monday this week.

    Things I’m grateful for going into this week (mostly birthday-related!):

    1. For our neighborhood playground. It’s not actually private but it’s not visible from the street, so nobody knows it’s here and it’s always empty. It was the perfect location for a birthday party.

    2. That the weather cooperated for our party. It’s been terribly cold, wet and windy here for weeks but the day of our party was sunny and in the high 50s. We got really lucky.

    3. That we were healthy for the party. We’ve had really bad luck with illnesses whenever we make big plans, most recently our failed Friendsgiving in December when B came down with hand/foot/mouth. I was pretty nervous as this one approached, because half the kids in our co-op have been sick. We made it, though!

    4. That we have a new dishwasher. Our old one has been acting up for months, and last week we scheduled the installation of a new one. The old one broke completely over the weekend, which added some difficulty to our celebrations. But how fortunate that we had already purchased a new one, and weren’t stuck without a working dishwasher for long.

    5. That we have a few slow weeks coming up. This past week felt really hectic getting ready for the party. In four weeks we’re going out of town, which will be fun but will also feel a bit hectic. Between now and then, though, we can take it a little easier.

  • Thrifty Thursday Roundup

    Thrifty Thursday Roundup

    This week I…

    Roasted cauliflower and beer-braised cabbage with cannellini beans
    • Ate home-cooked food. This isn’t unusual, but it’s the thriftiest way to eat so it gets to be here every week. I cooked beer-braised cabbage with cannellini beans for my entree, and also cooked roasted cauliflower, roasted broccoli and instant pot collard greens to have plenty of vegetables around. For breakfasts I made a big pot of steel cut oats. I made some tofu, rice and veggie burrito bowls to freeze for my kid to eat when we need something. And finally, I made this cheesy cauliflower pie sans crust (just didn’t want to deal with it tbh) for St. Patrick’s Day and it was really good. Last night my husband made a big pot of lentil soup that we’ll eat for the next couple days.
    Crustless cheesy cauliflower pie
    I like to store cooked oats in a 9×13 dish so it firms up almost into bars I can cut. Makes portioning easy.
    • I got a $20 haircut. I explained my recent haircut woes in this week’s Monday Gratitude post, but basically I’ve had a long string of bad haircuts and this one finally turned out how I wanted it to. And bonus, it was only $20! Anywhere else in the neighborhood costs at least $70.
    • I bought this backpack for $4.21 (regularly $80) using a combination of my REI rewards, an REI coupon and a $20 REI gift card I got for giving blood.
    • I took my son to the gymnastics open gym using a punch card I bought two years ago. We went a lot when he was still napping twice (it’s free for under 12 months and a fun place for a crawling baby to explore), but when he dropped to one nap we realized all their open gyms were during his new nap time. Seriously, they’re ALL between the hours of noon and 2pm. This has felt like a huge oversight on their part, since the open gyms are specifically for babies and toddlers. This year they opened a new time slot for kids under three from 9-10am and we’ve been going almost every week. We now have just one punch left, and just one more week before he turns three.
    • I took him to the Museum of Flight (we’re members) Sunday morning so my husband could do a little cooking in peace. I didn’t take any pictures, so this is a photo from a playground, which is also a frugal destination.
    Not pictured: a 10lb bag of brown basmati rice
    • We bought big bags of lentils, oats and rice at the chef store. I don’t remember how much this cost, but it’s much cheaper per pound than the regular grocery store. For us, the chef store is what people seem to think Costco is – the most cost-effective place to buy bulk food. We do shop for some things at Costco, but I find they primarily sell large packages of convenience/pre-cooked foods and that’s just not how we eat.
  • Two Very Different White Bean and Kale Soup Recipes

    Two Very Different White Bean and Kale Soup Recipes

    We eat soup pretty much every week from October through May. Here are the two I cook the most, both white bean and kale soups but very different from each other. I often food prep these and eat them through the week as well.

    Southwestern White Bean and Kale Soup

    Serves 8. Adapted from this recipe.

    Ingredients:

    • 2 15oz cans corn, drained
    • 2 tbsp olive oil
    • 1 yellow onion, chopped
    • 3 cloves garlic, diced
    • 2 tbsp tomato paste
    • 1 tbsp chili powder
    • 1 tsp ground cumin
    • 1 tsp ground coriander
    • 1 tsp smoked paprika
    • 2 7oz cans mild diced green chiles with liquid
    • 2 15oz cans cannellini beans, drained
    • 6 cups veggie broth (I use Better than Bouillon No Chicken concentrate and water)
    • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
    • 1 large bunch kale, chopped and stems removed (about 6-8 cups)
    • Juice from half a lime
    • Salt and fresh pepper

    1. Broil the corn until starting to brown, and set aside. I don’t add oil for this step.

    2. In a large stock pot, sauté the onion in olive oil for 7 minutes or until soft. Add garlic and sauté for 1 minute or until fragrant. Add tomato paste and spices and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently. Add green chiles and their liquid and cook 1 minute.

    2. Add corn, cannellini beans and broth and bring to a boil.

    3. Add kale, cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.

    4. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro, lime juice and fresh pepper. Using an immersion blender, puree about half of the soup. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.

    Tuscan White Bean Soup

    Serves 8. Adapted from this recipe. The original recipe says this takes 30 minutes, but that’s only true if all the vegetables are already chopped. I like to prepare all my vegetables before starting.

    • 2 tbsp olive oil
    • 2 medium onions, chopped
    • 4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
    • 4 ribs celery, chopped
    • 8 cloves garlic, minced
    • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
    • 6 cups veggie broth (I use I use Better than Bouillon No Chicken concentrate and water)
    • 4 15oz cans cannellini beans, with their liquid
    • 1 tbsp chopped dried rosemary (I like to use a mortar and pestle)
    • 1 large bunch kale, chopped and stems removed (about 6-8 cups)
    • 4 bay leaves
    • 1 3-4 inch parmesan rind (optional)
    • Salt and fresh black pepper
    • Juice from half a lemon
    • Fresh-grated parmesan for serving (optional)

    1. In a large stock pot, sauté the onions, carrots and celery in olive oil until soft, about 7-10 minutes. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about one minute.

    2. Add veggie broth, beans with their liquid, rosemary, parmesan rind and bay leaves. Increase heat to high, bring to a boil, add kale, reduce heat to low, cover and cook 15 minutes.

    3. Turn off heat, remove the bay leaves and parmesan rind, and add lemon juice. With an immersion blender, blend about half the soup. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.