Celebrating health Mexican style!

I have been making conscious decisions at cooking healthy and yesterday was the perfect day to make a nice hearty soup. The weather was gloomy and even my fiance wasn't feeling all that great..so I decided to make a tortilla soup. I was looking around for recipes and came across a bunch of them but this was my winner. The original recipe uses chicken and I decided to make a veggie version out of it.(The recipe in the link will definitely make 4 large portions of the soup. I had cut down the quantity to half and still we had a real good amount of soup!)

Black bean tortilla soup

Ingredients:
2 tbsp - Vegetable or corn oil
1 ear corn on the cob(remove the silk hairs, but keep the husks for grilling) or fresh-frozen cobs, defrosted
1 can black bean ( I prefer organic)
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning ---|-- didn't have either so just added curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin -------|
Salt and pepper
1 small to medium zucchini, small dice
1/2 medium yellow skinned onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 to 2 Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce (medium to hot heat level), chopped
1 (14-ounce) can stewed tomatoes
1/2 cup tomato sauce/ use tomato paste/puree and add equal amount of water to it
1.5 cups vegetable stock
1-2 cups blue corn tortilla chips, broken up into large pieces
1/2 cup yogurt ( substitute for sour cream, drain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve for 30 minutes in the refrigerator for a thicker texture)

• Preheat your oven to 350 F. Once heated place the corn covered with the husks in the oven over a foil or on a cookie sheet. It should be done in about 10 mins, turn it after 5 minutes.
• Place a pot to heat, once hot add 2 tablespoons oil. Add the garlic and the peppers. Saute for a minute and add zucchini and onions. Cook vegetables for about 5 to 7 minutes to soften. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce and stock. Bring soup to a nice bubble, and reduce heat to medium low.
• Scrape corn off cob and add to soup. Add chips to the soup in handfuls and fold in. Add salt and freshly crushed pepper to taste. Serve soup immediately with a dollop of yogurt.

I excluded a bunch of things from the original recipe to cut down the portion size. This still made a nice dinner for us (truly a complete meal!)

Note: Please add the salt at the very end since a lot of the ingredients already have salt and I hardly needed any at the end. Do not miss out on the chipotle peppers! They are the secret for this recipe! They really give an amazing flavor to the soup.

I highly apologize but I did not click any pictures! ( I know I should be punished for it) but nevertheless please believe my word! :) The soup was delicious.. I got a good job nod from my fiance too!! and he definitely isn't easy to please.. :P

So give this a try and do let me how it turned out!