bloggers block?

My life has been very uneventful that last few days, nothing new to talk about in the diet and no new workouts to talk about either.  Is bloggers block a real thing?  People who blog seem to be able to talk about anything, I mean how hard can it be to come up with something to talk about I do it with the people around me everyday.  The city is abuzz with talk of the Steelers off to the Superbowl again.  I love football and love the Steelers.  But could I please get one day in the news that doesn't discuss "Steeler Nation?"  I didn't need to know that Big Ben sneezed 4 times yesterday and was in the bathroom on 3 separate occasions.   I can do without the speculation of who will play and who won't, and the different news channels constant predictions that the Steelers will win.  This manufactured hype just annoys me.

I decided to daydream again back to the days a few months back when my wife and I were in Italy.  We traveled all over from Venezia, Firenze, Tuscany, Pisa, and Roma.  Aside from the history, romance, and beauty of Italy there is the food.  Oh did I mention  the delicious food.  Every place we went to was better than the next.  But the place that holds dearest my heart  stomach,  was a tiny little place in Firenze called il profeta (The Prophet).  They have a soup in Tuscany that is called Ribollita, which means "re-boiled,"  it is basically a vegetable soup that is very thick with day old bread mixed in. You store it overnight and reboil it the next day to serve.  Profeta has so many great foods but their Ribollita was out of this world.  During my daydreaming state I started to think that this recipe would be quite friendly for me in current change of diet.

• 1 cup cannellini beans, uncooked
• 1 large red onion, sliced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 4 potatoes, diced
• 10 zucchini, diced
• 1 1/2 cups swiss chard, shredded
• 1 leek
• 1 savoy cabbage, shredded
• 1 bunch kale, shredded
• salt and pepper
• 2-3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 days old stale Tuscan white bread

1. Soak the beans overnight and then cook over low heat. It will take approximately 1 to 1 1/2 hours for them to cook.
2. In a pan, gently fry the onion. Add the other vegetables, with the exception of the cabbage, kale and beans which are added at a later point. When the vegetables have sweated out their juice, cover with hot water and then add all the cabbage and kale. Cover and simmer for an hour over medium heat.
3. Add the cooked beans (some of them whole and some puréed), salt and pepper. Leave to simmer for another 20 minutes, stirring frequently because the beans tend to stick to the bottom of the pan. Add the tomato paste.
4. Slice the stale bread and, in an earthenware casserole, alternate layers of bread with the soup until the bread is soaked. Let rest for one day.
5. To serve, remove the desired quantity from the casserole and reheat it, or "re-boil" it, as the name in Italian suggests.

I am not sure how many points this would be, but seeing as it is mostly vegetables mixed with bread it really shouldn't be that much.   A word of warning, when you reboil it heat it very slowly the bread and beans will burn or stick to the pan as it warms.

Also, when I have made it in the past I just kept dumping in vegetables because those above amounts are just recommendations.  I usually buy all the veggies and just keep adding them until my stock pot can't handle anymore.

When its all said and done cooking and you are ready to serve, spoon it out onto a plate or bowl.  Drizzle lightly with EVOO and crush some kosher salt on top.  Enjoy!