Thanks for the reminder that it is actually possible to cook dried beans from scratch. We have a lot of those sitting around too, some of them possibly left from my co-op days 30 years ago.

Speaking of co-op days, I vaguely recall that the go-to fix for making vegetarian soup taste like something other than hot water with rewarmed vegetables in it was brewers yeast, which I assume you can still buy at co-ops. Does anybody still cook with brewers yeast?