Blackberry Soup

The other day, I made black bean soup for our family for dinner.  I love black bean soup!!  (I love soup in general and I am good at making it so that makes it all the better!  Maybe I will include the recipes at the end.......)

When Spike came in to ask me what was for dinner and I told him 'black bean soup', he informed me that he did not want black bean soup.  He wanted 'blackberry soup'.  I told him that I was not making blackberry soup because I did not have any blackberries and I was making black bean soup.

He told me I was wrong again (remember he is four), because we have blackberries growing out in the back yard.  He would go and pick some so I could make blackberry soup.  Really?!  Whatever, he is four.  I continued making dinner.  He went out to pick blackberries.  He brought in one or two and then he wanted help picking them and he complained until I assigned Sun to go out and help him.  Together I think they picked four.  He continued to ask people to go and help him and he was in and out of the back door.

Spike picking berries in our weed patch :-)

When all was said and done, I think they picked 11 berries.  But both Drew and I felt that Spike needed to be rewarded for the effort he put in to helping me make 'black berry soup'.  I didn't have any idea how to make blackberry soup or its equivalent that Spike would like.  Then I had a stroke of genius!  I cut up two of the half eaten apples on the counter (they had been Spike's too), mixed the 11 blackberries into the apples, and made a fruit crisp topping, just enough for one person.  Then I put it into a tiny pyrex dish and baked it.

It looked kind of like this

When I showed Spike his 'blackberry soup', he was not impressed and kind of wrinkled up his nose.  Then I mixed it in front of him so he could see that the blackberries were really in there, though they had just kind of tinted all the apples pink and disappeared.  He said he didn't want it.  But I convinced him to try it.

After a few minutes and a few bites, he said, "Hey Mom, this is the best blackberry soup ever!"

My thought, "Ya, I know, I just fed  you dessert for dinner.  Who wouldn't like that?"  He never would even try the black bean soup the rest of us ate.

But here is that recipe:
Saute:
1/2 a large onion, chopped
2 TBLS fresh garlic, (maybe 3 cloves)
1/2 red pepper, chopped
2 jalepenos, chopped

When onions are translucent, put into the saute mix:
4 Cups of chicken broth
1 can of corn
1 can of stewed tomatoes
5 cups of black bean (3 cans?)
 2 tsps of salt
1/2 tsp of cumin
1/4 tsp of chipotle powder (optional)
1/4 C chopped cilantro

Warm through.  We put rice in ours too, but if you put it into the soup, the rice will soak up all the broth, so I just put some rice into each serving as I served it.  Super easy, super fast and very delicious.  We also served it with corn chips and a salad for a quick meal.