September Vegetable Soup

Tunes: Hawk Nelson: mix of albums – something upbeat to really get me going :)

I made this in my Crock-Pot, since I do love using it!

32 oz unsalted vegetable cooking stock (I used one made by Kitchen Basics)

32 oz water

16 oz 17 Bean & Barley Mix (Trader Joe’s makes a great one)

½ cup chopped sweet basil

8 cloves garlic, smashed and coarsely chopped

2 cups chopped carrot

2 red onions, chopped

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 cup cut green beans

3 cups chopped broccoli

1 cup chopped celery

½ cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes

2 cups chopped white button mushrooms

1 cup cut bean sprouts

3 cups packed chopped collard greens

1 cup frozen peas

1.  Start heating the vegetable stock, water and bean & barley mix with the Crock-pot on high.

2.  While those heat up and cook for about 1½ hours, prepare the rest of your vegetables.  Forty minutes in I added the basil; and then the garlic 40 minutes after I added the basil.

3.  An hour and a half into the total cook time, I added the carrot, onion, green beans, broccoli and celery.  Then ½ hour after that I added the sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, sprouts, collard greens and peas.

4.  Five hours on high was the magic number, all the vegetables and beans were a perfect tenderness!

I had a bowl of this for dinner and I was quite happy with it.  It has a minestrone taste to it.  If you like things to have more spice flavor, experiment with some herbs… maybe a bay leaf or two, rosemary, more basil.  I like the natural taste of things, so I tend to not spice too much on dishes like this… now give me a curry and I’m spicing things all up!!

I would normally make my own vegetable stock.  Come to think of it, I may have some in the freezer… hmm, haha, too late now.  But it does take time to make and I really just wanted to make the soup, so I found the Kitchen Basics at Shop Rite and it’s just vegetable based, no additives, so that made me happy.

You could probably just add all the vegetables in at one time so you can actually utilize it being in a Crock-Pot and leave it.  I added here and there depending on what vegetables I felt needed to cook longer.  Definitely give the beans that 1½ hours cooking time since they’re dry and need time to really soak and simmer.

I have a 6 quart capacity Crock-Pot and this filled it up almost to the brim.  If it hadn’t, I probably would have added more stock or water.