Recipe: Vegetable Minestrone Soup

Hubby has been requesting more soups lately. Preferably vegetable soups. Yesterday I skimmed through my Taste of Home cookbook and found a recipe for minestrone soup. I tweaked it just a bit to suit our preferences (I left out the meat and used broken up spaghetti and a bit of leftover rice instead of the pasta it called for). I realized that I had some sourdough bread rounds in the freezer so I pulled those out, because there's nothing better than crusty bread with soup. This time I just used the recipe as a guide. I really did not measure anything...plus I realized that the recipe was for 20 servings and uh, I only needed 4 (I usually make a bit more though so we have leftovers). Please forgive if there are no measurements. For the veggies I chopped up a generous amount of celery, carrots, cabbage and onion. I like a chunky soup, so I used quite a bit. Also add a few cloves of garlic, minced. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil to your soup pan. I love my new pans by the way. Though I need to buy a good cleaner for them as our water tends to leave marks.

Add the celery and onion and garlic

saute till tender

Add carrots and cabbage

Stir in broth. I used 1 14 1/2 oz. carton of free range, low sodium broth

Add one can tomato sauce and a can of diced tomatoes, along with some Italian seasoning, garlic powder, salt, pepper and I threw in a beef bouillon cube!

Let this all simmer for about 30 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Add a can of red kidney beans and a can of chickpeas, both having been drained and rinsed. I also added some chopped zucchini at this point too. I added some leftover brown rice, and also some spaghetti noodles that I broke up into small pieces. You could add any type of pasta you want, or just omit it altogether. You could also add some browned beef or turkey meat if you'd like. Enjoy and get creative.

With Joy UNquenchable,