Waste Not: Chicken Tortilla Soup

The last couple of days I've been clearing out clutter from the closets and organizing because Thing 1 and Thing 2 refuse to stop growing (I've begged them but they laugh at me, like mean kids on the playground. Evil comes in cute packages here).

And while it's still too warm to winterize the back deck, where my tomato plants are still producing; it's not too warm for soup.

My pantry and refrigerator were caught up in my whirlwind of organization but nobody has to know that dinner was the product of a mad woman in action.

I'll tell you what I did, with possible substitutions in parenthesis next to it because there are no hard and fast rules to soup (thank God mankind hasn't ruined that at least).

1/2 of a leftover roasted chicken (2-3 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded)
4 cups chicken broth
4 cups water
4 chicken bullion cubes (or all chicken broth from a can/box; I'm making a BIG pot of soup)
1/2 pound of black beans, cooked and rinsed (2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained)
1 small onion, chopped super duper fine to avoid detection
1 green bell pepper
1 15 oz can chopped tomatoes in chili spices (or you can just use a can of Rotel and add in some salsa and skip the onions and peppers altogether)
2 cups frozen corn (or canned corn if you prefer)
cilantro, chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, salt and pepper to taste.

You can either make this on the stove top about and hour before you want to serve it, letting it simmer for a bit over a very low heat. Or you can put it all in the crockpot on high for a couple of hours.

Either way, shred some cheddar, yank out that last little bit of sour cream and dig around for the half-eaten bag of tortilla chips that nobody bothered to finish (because now if they are all crumbled up it's ok-it's a garnish). 

Yay for dinner and clean houses (if only for a brief moment).