The Slowcooker Soups "Method"

This is really a simple way to cook healthy, delicious, and time-saving soups to feed your family. You will fill good about slowcooking. We cook soups almost every day, sometimes following a soup recipe, sometimes making up our own recipes.
But we always follow a simple method to achieve ease, speed, and nutrition. The method depends on keeping certain ingredients on hand at all times. We call these stock ingredients; that is, they are always in stock and make stock too! Soup stock.
We prefer to purchase some the following ingredients from the Mexican section of a supermarket or from an hispanic food store. This is because one of our guiding principles is to buy cheap when cheap is just as good. Hispanic stores and many supermarkets carry very inexpensive spices and other ingredients at a fraction of famous brand name ingredients. Keep the following on hand:

On the Shelf

• Garlic Powder
• Chile Powder
• Ground Cumin
• Bay Leaves
• Menudo (Mexican herb blend)
• Oregano Leaves
  
• "Lite" Salt

In the Refridgerator

• Celery
• Large carrots

In the Cupboard

• Lentils
• Split Peas
• Pinto Beans
• Black Beans
• Navy Beans
• Black-eyed Peas
• Lima Beans

The above list is half of the method. Here is the other half. Just before bed or first thing in the morning, fill your slowcooker with hot water from the tap. Add your ingredients, cover it, and leave it. When you come home the soup will be done. Because all of the ingredients are readily available the only time spent is chopping a couple of vegetables and throwing the ingredients in the crockpot.
Note: you can speed up the time the soup cooks by folding a kitchen towel and placing it on top of the slow cooker lid. This acts as an insulator and will cook the soup faster. Also, after cooking the soup, the towel can help to keep it warm.
If you want to take soup to work with you, prepare it the night before. When you get up, while you are fixing your morning coffee, you can ladle the soup into a thermos.