Seasonally Challenged: Vegetable Soup

I fed my husband vegetables last night, lots of em.  Six different veggies, to be accurate.  And no meat, potatos, pasta or rice.  Miracle?  Nah, just starve him til he'll eat anything!

Shooting from the hip vegetable soup!

Disclaimer: I know that it is coming on spring, and this recipe is mostly tinned and winter veggies, but I have said that I am seasonally challenged, so I'm just living up to the hype!


This was last night:

• Cheeky pint with workmate and his lady.
• 6:30 @ home: husband dishes out a snack of pita bread and hummus.
• 7: 00 Cracked a bottle of wine - the alcohol held off hunger for a while so I could catch up on Grey's Anatomy.
• 8:00, me, "oh, guess it's time to make dinner!"  I checked the recipe for the Minestrone I had planned to make.  $h!t, it takes hours.  We didn't have hours, the growls coming from Jonno's monster of a stomach were drowning out the rugby game, that's when you know it's bad!
• Delivered bad news to husband, he takes it stoically then astonishingly is still able to think on his feet: "isn't there some soup frozen in the freezer?  Just throw that in a pot, she'll be right!"
• Sure enough in the freezer there is an ice cream container full of what looks like chicken soup - we're saved!
• Not so fast - the soup is only chicken broth, left over from when I roasted a chicken and then thriftily used the bones to make stock.
• Me: "Didn't I buy some chicken the other day?  I'll just cook up one of those and chuck it into my already-defrosting stock and we'll have chicken soup.  Boom!"
• Nope, I didn't buy chicken, I bought pork chops.  Fail.
• In a strange twist of fate, I had just bought celery, which I never buy because we both hate the flavour of raw celery.  It tastes like sweet grassy nothingness, you know it's true!
• Bonus: other actual vegetables in the house (as opposed to frozen ones, usually reserved for stir-fry), so boom!  Vegetable Soup!
• 8:45 Put Round 1 of veggies in the pot, then go back to Grey's and another glass of red.
• 9:00 Round 2 of veggies plus herbs, more Grey's.  Possibly more wine.
• 9:20 Grey's is done, I remembered that I was supposed to feed my husband, dish some out and actually sit down and talk to husband for the first time that day. 

Lesson learned: label what you freeze!  I also discovered some kind of dough in the freezer, and I have no idea what it's for.  Could be pierogies, bread, pie.... 

And maybe I should start reading recipes before I plan them for the week?  But come on, who has time to actually read things, especially when the rugby is on, which it is constantly right now.  Thanks Rugby World Cup, for usurping my husband and stalling our lives for six weeks.

Oh, oh, but wait - RWC you make up for all your time-stealing by giving us ships to explore this weekend!  Ahoy mateys!  Five grey Navy boats (ships?) are currently gracing our office view and taunting us with their cool gadgety-looking things.  So.  Cool.

Spontaneous Vegetable Soup

Serves: 6 at least

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 L chicken stock or broth
• 1 tin cannelini beans or kidney beans
• 1 large kumara, sweet potato, or white potato
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 tin sweet corn
• 2 tsp chicken or vegetable boullion or stock powder
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp rosemary
• salt & pepper

1. Defrost frozen stock or bring liquid stock to a rolling boil in a large pot.
2. Round 1 of veggies: beans, kumara/potato, carrots - into the pot for 15 minutes.
3. Round 2: celery, onions, corn, plus the herbs and stock or powder.  Season with plenty of salt and pepper.  Let simmer for another 10-15 minutes. 
4. You could also through in some pasta in this last step, but don't cook too long so that pasta doesn't get all soggy and floppy.
5. Serve to an unsuspecting yet starving family.