Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Minestrone soup

Crock pot Minestrone Soup
Dice these veggies and saute in a pan with 1 tbsp of oil.
1 onion
2 celery stalks
1 cup of peeled potatoes
1 large carrot
Put in crock pot with
1 can of diced or stewed tomatoes
4 cups of chicken stock
1/2 cup of salsa
1 1/2 cup of tomato vegetable juice
1/2 can of kidney beans
Season with 1 tsp of pepper
1 tbsp of dried parsley
1/2 tbsp of Italian seasoning
cook on high for 4-5 hours
3/4 cup of noodles - boil  1/2 cooked and drain
add to soup - leave for 20 minutes -EAT

This is a very tasty soup and it makes a lot.
While this soup was in the crock pot I put a batch of bread in the bread maker.  They take about the same amount of time. A really lovely meal on a winter day with leftover meat for sandwiches.
We grow tomatoes in Sept and make our own salsa.  We use it in everything.  If you don't have salsa or some other ingredient listed here in the soup try substituting,  See how it turns out.  Make it spicy or cook sausage first with the veggies. If you add sausage then you probably don't need chicken stock.  (I haven't tried that yet.)  Also with our  tomatoes I cut the stem out and freeze them whole.  Then I can add them to soups and stews by running them under hot water and then the peel just falls off.  I put 4 frozen tomatoes in the Crock pot instead of the diced tomatoes. It turned out really good.
I froze the other half of kidney beans.  So the next time I made chili I just took out the kidney beans and 1/2 lb of cooked gr. beef  I had also froze and made a chili in the crock pot.  I halved this recipe. This is how I make it but you can try it with mild store bought salsa.

Chili
1 lb of ground beef,
2 cans of spaghetti sauce,
1 can of mushrooms,
1 can of kidney beans 
2 cups of our home made salsa.
2 tbsp of chili powder.
  Cook ground beef (sometimes with a chopped onion). drain, add spaghetti sauce to fry pan to heat up.
Throw all ingredients in crock pot and leave on high 5 hours or low 8 hours. The salsa is the secret. It makes the chili sweet and it adds lots of veggies but hides them cuz they are all cooked down.  I also sometimes chop up frozen carrot/broccoli/cauliflower mix real small and add it.