The Cost of Slow-Cooking Zucchini, Spinach, and White Bean Soup

I don’t want to say goodbye to summer squash yet.

As of last Thursday, we are officially in autumn—and I know that some people are all “culturally, autumn begins on Labor Day,” but I will not be cheated out of the last three weeks of summer—and autumn, to me, means two things:

1. Seeing how long I can go without turning on my new electric heating units. I have taken up sweater-covered arms against the idea of paying for electric heat, and I will hold out for at least as long as Napoleon did. (It’s only gotten down to 55 degrees—outside—in the evening, so far.)
2. Crock-Pot soup.

Since I wasn’t ready to give up summer squash yet, I went searching for a good zucchini soup and found this recipe at Delish:

Spinach and White Bean Soup

I know it doesn’t include zucchini in the title, but it does include zucchini in the ingredients, plus a full cup of shredded Parmesan cheese.

Here’s how much it cost me:

Zucchini: $0.80

Pacific Organic Vegetable Broth, 32 oz: $2.79

S&W Premium Cannellini Beans, 15 oz: $1.00

Three Rivers Winery 2013 Steel Chardonnay, 1 cup: $3.00

Fresh Express Baby Spinach, 5 oz: $2.99

C&W Early Harvest Petite Peas, 1/3 lb: $0.83

Primo Taglio Shredded Parmesan Cheese, 5 oz: $3.99

Six baby carrots chopped up because I already had baby carrots in the refrigerator and didn’t want to buy a grown-up one: $0.25

Signature Select Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 2 tbsp: $0.24

Garlic, 4 cloves: $0.50

Salt and pepper: $0.10

Total cost: $16.49

This’ll make about five servings overall, which comes to $3.30 per serving, plus the cost of whatever crackers I crumble on top.

However, I did make a big mistake with this soup: I added the spinach, Parmesan, and peas at the very end, so they wouldn’t get too mushy in the Crock-Pot, and I dumped them all in at once instead of stirring them in slowly. This wasn’t a problem for the spinach or the peas, but it was a problem for the 5 ounces of shredded Parmesan, which melted into a solid mass before I had the chance to stir it into the broth.

If I do this soup again, I’ll probably leave the cheese out of it. The zucchini provides enough flavor on its own.

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