Married with Luggage: Our First Meal at Home – WHITE BEAN AND CHORIZO SOUP

This is a guest post by Betsy and Warren Talbot of An Uncluttered Life.

Since we began traveling the world in 2010, my husband Warren has collected recipes. Every time we have a great meal, meet a chef, or start a conversation at a market, he wants to know what’s cooking and how it’s made.

I remember him asking at a market in Thailand how to fold the banana leaf to properly cook bee larvae. That’s how curious he is about cooking.

But usually it is something more likely to become a favorite dish, like the perfectly cooked steak he learned to make in New York, the homey Flemish stew he picked up in Belgium, or the spicy lamb tagine he discovered in Morocco.

Our travels have given us a taste of the world, and now that we’ve bought a house in Spain, a place to call home between our travels, the world we’ve seen can be recreated right here in our kitchen.

The house is set in a whitewashed village in the Andalucia region of Spain, a hilly desert area a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean Sea. We bought it in January and moved in this March. Having our own bed feels strange after the hundreds of beds we’ve slept in these past few years. So does having pots and pans, the best we’ve had in years (most rentals come with basic supplies, so we’re thrilled to have heavy pots and sharp knives again).

We have big plans for this house: dinners with our new Spanish friends, hosting the friends we’ve met in our travels, and writing books from the sunny landing upstairs (maybe even a cookbook!)

But before we create dinner menus of Kung Pao Chicken, Hungarian Goulash, Thai Khao Soy, Peruvian Causa, French Cassoulet, or Russian Borscht from our travels, we first want to explore the flavors of our new home in Spain. And that starts with the dinner Warren made the night we finally moved in to our whitewashed village house after eight weeks of renovations.

Warren pulled out the heavy pans and began to sauté the locally-made chorizo we bought at the weekly market. With onions, garlic, and chili added, my mouth started watering. A new local friend grows her own tomatoes and peppers and cans a spicy tomato mixture. We added her gift of these spicy tomatoes to the pan along with the white beans. As the food simmered, I cut the freshly baked bread we bought from the baker that morning.

Warren and I talked about how our dream of seeing the world has evolved over the years, going from a one-year trip to a full-time lifestyle to a growing business and now to being homeowners in a foreign country. It has been an unconventional love story of two people who were once on the brink of divorce and now travel to the edges of the world together, discovering culinary delights in everything from humble market stalls to the finest meals in the homes of new friends. We can hardly believe we once wanted to call it quits on this relationship, and we’ve come a long way since then.

When the soup was done, we set the table in the dining room and poured the wine, toasting to the first of many international meals in our Spanish home. Our story has taken a delicious turn, and I can’t wait to see where it will go next. All we know for sure is that it will have plenty of great food, wine, and friends.

This tastes better the second day and freezes well if you want to double up the recipe.

Buen provecho!

BIO: Betsy Talbot and her husband Warren are the authors of Married with Luggage: What We Learned about Love by Traveling the World. Through their popular books, engaging weekly podcast, and revealing Sunday emails, they share the unconventional wisdom they’ve learned about living, working, and traveling together since 2010. Find out more about modern love and partnership at An Uncluttered Life.