MoFo Day 2: Lunch #1

Minestrone with a toasted hummus, spinach, tomato and avocado sandwich

I live alone (well, at least as far as cooking goes - otherwise I live with a cat and 2 cockatiels, all rescues).  And while I love to cook, I don't have time to cook a meal from scratch every day.  My solution has been to freeze individual-sized portions of recipes - I don't get stuck eating the same thing every night for an entire week, and I can quickly pull a homemade meal out of the freezer on my more busy nights or to take for lunch.  When I made minestrone last week I knew I'd be freezing some of it for later.

To make the soup, I combined the 2 minestrone recipes from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen (because I wanted to use canned beans, but liked the spices better in the classic recipe).  For the beans, I used Great Northern and shelled frozen edamame.  I cooked the pasta separately.  When ready to serve, I put the pasta in the bottom of the bowl and ladled the soup over it.  I only froze the soup (without the pasta) because pasta gets really mushy when frozen and thawed in liquid.

For the sandwich, I just toasted 2 slices of bread, smeared each with hummus, and layered on the spinach, sliced tomatoes, and avocado.  Perfect for a fall lunch!