• Make chicken stock by simmering de-skinned chicken leg drumsticks (10 items, about 3-3.5 pounds) in 8 cups of water for 1.5 hours.
• Remove chicken, preserve for making chicken salad. At this point chicken should be so tender, the meat will be falling off the bones.
• To the stock pot with chicken stock, add pinto beans. I started out with half a cup of dried pinto beans that I hydrated in the fridge overnight. They expanded to about 1.25 cups of wet beans. Later I decided that the soup did not have enough beans, so next time I'll start with a whole cup of dried pinto beans.
• Add one potato, chopped. I added a big baking potato. It was too much. Next time I'll use half of that. Need to cut it into very small pieces.
• 4 roasted corn cubs. Cut the corn off and put into the pot.
• 6 roasted poblano peppers. Remove the charred skin, chop, put into the stock. It ended up being way too hot for me. Next time - maybe 2 poblanos and 3 red bell peppers?
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• 2 onions, chopped and sauteed.
• Simmer until beans are tender, about 45 min.
• Adjust salt. In total I have used 1.5 tsp.

The soup had great flavor, but was way too spicy for me to enjoy. Need to cut down on poblanos.

• Frozen chunks of rabbit meat-on-the-bone (total probably around 3-4 pounds)
• Put it in the stock pot, add 8 cups of water to cover the meat and simmer for 45 min.
• Meanwhile in a saute pan saute 2 chopped onions with cumin seed in a bit of olive oil.
• To the stock pot, add 1.5 tea spoon of salt
• a bit of black pepper
• 3 pinches of chili powder
• a splash of vermouth
• 1 tsp of Indian ginger paste
• 1 Tbsp of Indian garlic paste
• 1/2 cup of toor dal (yellow lentils)
• 1 cup of frozen home made stock
• Italian dried herbs
• 1 package of white mushrooms
• once onions have suted, put them in the stock pot
• simmer for 1 hour
• add 2 chopped carrots
• add 1 cup of hydrated black eyed peas (I hydrate them overnight in refrigerator)
• cook until peas are soft (about 45 min). Adjust salt if needed.

Butternut squash is a "winter" squash, meaning it is hard on the outside and has hard flesh as well. An easy way to prepare it for the soup is to put a whole butternut squash into a large plastic bowl (or even a pitcher) and cover it with freshly boiled water. It takes me two runs of the electric kettle (about 1.5 L each) to get enough boiling water. I then let squash sit in it for 30min-1 hour (whatever it takes me to prep the rest of the soup). After this hot water treatment, it's pretty easy to peel off the outer skin with potato peeler and chop up the squash with a heavy chef's knife.

• Two onions, chopped, saute in the soup pot in a little bit of olive oil. I saute them for 30 min, until they develop rich brown color.
• Add 1 sliced carrot
• Add 1 chopped medium potato
• Add 2 cups of homemade beef stock
• Add 1 chopped butternut squash
• Add enough water to cover the squash. In my case that was 3.5 cups
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1 tsp of Indian ginger paste
• 1 Tbsp of Indian garlic paste
• Simmer for 50 min
• Blend the soup (I have a nice nifty submersible hand held blender).
• Serve in a soup bowl with a table spoon of cream