Not-Pea Soup

Not-Pea Soup

1 onion
1 carrot
2 celery ribs
4 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon thyme
2 bay leaves, whole
2 pounds smoked ham hocks or shanks (if you can get 'em, shanks are meatier)
3 pounds frozen green beans, thawed
8 cups water
1 tablespoon ham bouillon concentrate
xanthan, guar, or glucomannan
1/2 teaspoon pepper -- or to taste
salt -- or vege-sal, to taste
hot sauce -- optional

Peel your onion and whack it into chunks. Do the same for your carrot. Throw 'em both in your food processor with the S-blade in place, and pulse till they're chopped pretty fine. Dump this in your slow cooker. Put the food processor bowl back on the stand, and put the blade back in place. Whack your celery into chunks, including any fresh leaves, and throw it in the food processor; chop that pretty fine, too. (You could do the celery with the onion and carrot, but it's so much softer that it's likely to be pretty pulverized by the time the carrot is chopped.) Dump that in the slow cooker, too. Crush in the garlic, and add the thyme and bay leaves.

Throw your hocks or shanks (shanks are meatier) on top of the seasoning vegetables. Dump in all three bags of green beans. Add the water, cover, and set to low. Let it cook for a good 6-8 hours, till the green beans are soft and have changed color -- they should look like canned green beans.

Use a slotted spoon to fish out the hocks or shanks, and put 'em on a plate. Let them cool to the point where you can handle them.

In the meanwhile, use a stick blender to puree the soup till it's smooth. Now blend in the ham bouillon concentrate -- Better Than Bouillon makes one.

Use your guar, xanthan or glucomannan shaker and the stick blender to thicken up the soup to your taste. Salt and pepper to taste, too. I like a few dashes of Louisiana-style hot sauce -- Tabasco, Frank's, or the like -- in this, too, but go with your own taste.

Pick the meat off those hocks or shanks, chop it up, and stir it back into the soup, then serve.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

8 servings, each with: 370 Calories; 22g Fat ; 29g Protein; 16g Carbohydrate; 6g Dietary Fiber;10g usable carb