Soup can be tricky, especially if you’re trying to lose weight. There are so many delicious — and actually really simple — recipes out there, but they’re not always conducive to weight loss.

But it can be filling — it just seems to take up so much room in my stomach. Soup is one of my favorite cold-weather meals, and much to my surprise, my first Floridian winter has been cold enough to make me crave a good, hot bowl of soup. The black bean soup from the November issue of Cooking Light really hit the spot.

Black bean soup is one of those things I always to try at restaurants, but I can never get past the visual of the murky soup with the lump black beans. But these ingredients were all things I like, and I figured I’d really like it once it was pureed.

Actually, I loved it.

I followed the Cooking Light recipe, but I did not top it with chopped boiled eggs (that just did not sound appealing to me) and I used canned black beans that I rinsed (the recipe calls for dry beans).

Pureeing hot soup in the blender was tricky, because it recommends you put a towel over the blender’s opening. I had visions of my kitchen walls coated in brown goo, so I left the lid on, but the liquid did, in fact, overflow, because the steam couldn’t escape. This part of the recipe means this is a weekend or make-ahead meal for me, but it’s worth the time.

For some crunch, I counted out a serving of blue corn chips (I like the ones from Target’s Archer Farms house brand, with flax seeds in them).

A super cute serving vessel is optional, of course.