Over winter break I was catching up with family and they were asking me about Pittsburgh and my general life. I told them I rarely go out and usually just bring a lunch & dinner to studio (since I’m usually there for 12 hours). So what do you make? I reflect on my semester and the meals I had made for myself. It was bad. Not in a bad-for-you way, but in a oh-that’s-sad way. A mash up of quinoa or rice plus x. I really do like cooking and always have the best intentions to make something a little less sad. But I usually forget one of the ingredients, time runs away from me, and I usually just end up randomly combining things.
When I got back this week I decided to maybe eat a little better. But what to eat? It’s funny, you kind of think the only normal things to eat are the things your parents made for you. Unfortunately getting to the Asian market would be a day-long event for me and the public transit system. After searching around I found this recipe for vegetable soup I had saved a while ago.
Soups seem very complicated to me, but this didn’t seem that bad. And—what, ho!—it turns out it’s just randomly throwing vegetables together in a pot. Perfect.
Vegetable Soup
(via Oh, Ladycakes)
- 2 tbl olive oil
- 1 small onion
- 7 cups filtered water
- 3 veggie bouillon cubes (I only had chicken, but whatever)
- 7 oz tomato paste
- 3 cups diced tomatoes
- 16 oz frozen peas (1 bag)
- 16 oz frozen corn (1 bag)
- 8 oz frozen green beans, bite size
- 8 oz frozen lima beans
- 2 carrots, thinly sliced
- 4 celery stalks, thinly sliced
- 1-2 russet potatoes, cubed
instructions:
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and stir until they become transparent; about 2-3 minutes.
- Add the water, bouillon cubes and tomato paste; bring to a boil. Add the remaining ingredients; cover, reduce heat to low and let simmer for 90 minutes.
- Remove lid, increase heat to medium and let cook for at least an additional 60 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Serve with salt, pepper and nutritional yeast. Soup can be stored in the fridge for up to one week, or in the freezer for up to six weeks. I also arbitrarily added other spices mixes and chili pepper flakes.
what happened:
So, obviously I didn’t follow the instructions exactly. In fact, I didn’t even realize all that the tomato paste went in first and 100% did not follow any of the timing instructions. I was kind of like “how is this all going to get red and soupy?…oh, I should add all this tomato stuff.” What I ended up doing is cooking the onions per instructions and then frantically trying to peel & cut all the other ingredients in a timely manner so they finished cooking at the same time. Instead of russet potatoes I got one of those tiny potato medleys from Trader Joe’s so there was a lot more peeling involved. I don’t know how far it veered from the original recipe taste-wise, but I still thought it was yummy! With a little buttered bread, mmmm.