As I mentioned last week, I’m a huge fan of soup for dinner. It’s easy to make, good for the waistline, and good for the body. And it’s just the thing for the cool fall/winter nights. (Yes, even though I’m in Houston, it gets a bit chilly here. To be sure, it’s no Iowa, but overnight temps now regularly visit the 30’s.)

A Texas favorite is tortilla soup. For years, I missed out on it in restaurants and “easy-make” versions, though, because my strict vegetarian food choices conflicted with the liberal use of chicken and chicken stock in most recipes. Even once I added fish and discovered a meat-free version at a local fine grocery store, I still felt the meal lacked “umph.” A couple of veggies, some veggie broth, and oodles of boiled tortilla shells isn’t exactly the bastion of nutrition.

Imagine my delight when, strolling the soup aisles during a recent visit to Central Market, I discovered South of the Border Tortilla Soup by Frontier Soups. No chicken broth listed in the ingredients, and a substantial base corn and black beans. Sweet.

South of the Border Tortilla Soup (Frontier Soups) - Our tortilla soup mix is a sure-fire winner! This chicken tortilla soup is so good it may call for a party. Add chicken, salsa and chips for this Mexican specialty. ($6)

I modified the directions on back, and boiled the ingredients in vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I made Graham a separate pot of boiled, shredded chicken to include in his bowl, but I wondered if there was something more I could add to give it a bit of umph for me. Since I added fish into my diet a year ago, I wondered if a bit of shrimp would work. (Until now, I’d never heard of shrimp tortilla soup. This version sure looks good too, doesn’t it? )

The choice of salsa the recipe calls for is huge. I used a roasted habanero salsa that was HOT, but added a nice roasted flavor to the meal. This particular salsa was completely pureed, so we did not have small bits of tomato floating about in the soup. The 8 oz of salsa the recipe calls for (about 1/2 a jar) is really a matter entirely of personal choice, and I could envision a scenario where I made each batch of this soup differently.

The soup itself cooks up nicely. In previous soups I’ve used with dehydrated black beans, despite cooking for the prescribed time period, the black beans remain grainy and dehydrated. Not so with the Frontier Soups version, which cook up quite nicely and provide an extra bit of fiber to the meal.

As for the addition of shrimp, that stroke of genius worked out marvelously.