Easy Tasty Veggie Soup

I have to give credit to my friend Lesley for this meal idea. She wrote about this soup on her blog a few months ago and I've been making it about once a week all winter! It is easy to put together and cooks up in about 30 minutes. A lot of times (when I'm making any soup) I make it early in the day and let it sit on the stove for the afternoon. Chopping the veggies ahead of time will make it go even faster. The soup is very versatile, but the main ingredient is the bag of Bob's Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix which contains split yellow, red and green peas, lentils, barley, and alphabet pasta. This meal is a huge hit with my kids and is something I serve to other kids and families who may not be used to eating our style of food.


Ingredients:
2 cups vegi soup mix
1 onion finely chopped
1 carrot finely chopped
2 ribs celery finely chopped
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
2 cubes veggie bouillon plus 8 cups water (equivalent to 8 cups veggie broth plus extra water)
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
salt and pepper to taste


Saute onion, garlic, celery, and carrots for about 5 minutes or until they get soft. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 20 mins.


Optional:
You can add a handful of chopped greens (kale, collards, spinach) the last few minutes of cooking. Potatoes are also good in this soup but you'll need to add extra water. Canned tomato paste goes well also. Daniel made it into a curried soup by adding Indian spices and you can also make it more Italian flavored by adding basil, oregano, rosemary, etc. The options of what you can do with this little bag of soup are endless.

The bag is on sale at Kroger right now. Usually it is around $4.50 but it was going for around $3 the last time I was in there so I bought all of them!