Category: Soups

Being in a CSA means having a refrigerator full of vegetables in various states of freshness and amounts.
This is a throw-it-together soup you can do with any vegetables you have, in any amounts.

About every two or three weeks I empty all the vegetables out of my refrigerator. I need to mentally start fresh every so often or I get overwhelmed and feel bad that some things have gone bad. I and make this soup to clean out the vegetable drawer and I always feel better.
I use everything that is still good and compost the rest.
Here is everything out of my refrigerator, look familiar? The jars at the top of the picture are stock and tomatoes I canned. You can use store bought if you don’t have homemade of course.

For this soup you will need;

1 quart of stock
1 pint or can of tomatoes
About 4 to 6 cups of chopped vegetables and herbs if you have them.
Beans or pasta if you like, or if you have them leftover, totally optional.

I sort out, clean, and chop all the vegetables. Put the cleaned and chopped vegetables that take a longer time to cook, like potatoes, onions, and carrots, and get them cooking in a hot pan filmed with a little oil.

Add some herbs if you have them. I leave the stems on the herbs and pull them out when everything is done. I don’t like to mess around with pulling the tiny leaves off. Cook this until the vegetables are almost cook through.

Add in whatever vegetables you have that are quicker cooking. I had broccoli, peppers,and beans

When the second dump of vegetables just brightens up add your stock and tomatoes. The trick to this soup is to just cook the vegetables, not overcook them.

I had some basil and about a 1/2 a jar of garbanzo beans I threw in at this point.

Just warm the soup and serve. If you aren’t going to serve this right away take it off the heat. You really don’t want to over cook all those yummy vegetable, it really muddies the flavors.

Here it is. I hope you can see how the vegetables are just cooked through.

I added some fresh parsley and cheesy bread.

Almost a quart leftover. I love leftovers.
Happy Labor Day! Fall is just around the corner, with all the great squash and winter greens to look forward to.

This is a recipe/formula that has been going around the blogs on the internet. I had never made it before but I have seen several blogs raving about it. Here is the original Basic Green Soup
The recipe calls for chard and spinach but you can substitute any vegetables you have on hand. Broccoli, zucchini, anything you have.
I had some leftover, kind of droopy, chard and kale in my fridge and I was trying to make room for my CSA this week so I decide to try this soup with them.
Look familiar?

The trick to making this soup is to really take your time cooking down the onions. They need to collapse like this. It takes about 30 minutes to get them to this point.

While the onions are cooking, cook the rice in the 3 cups of water.

Dump the chopped vegetables into the cooked rice and water. The recipe says to add 4 cups of stock with the vegetables.  I just added more water and didn’t use stock. It worked fine and tasted great.

I forgot to take a picture of the soup finished, doh. It looked pretty much like this: Anna Thomas Green Soup
I took this to a friend’s house for dinner last night and served it barely warm. It is a nice silky textured soup. I hope you try this with what you have on hand. This is one of those great base recipes to have in your repertoire. I’ll make it again with different vegetables and take a picture.

– Mo