Amazing Soup – Vegetarian Recipe

Amazing Soup – Vegetarian Recipe

I grew up cooking for the entire family and have always enjoyed the process of combining a number of ingredients and enjoying the delicious results. Now that I am a busy career woman, I haven’t always taken the time that I should for cooking, but when I do cook, it is always fun and a nice adventure.

Since I spend the majority of my days and nights inventing ideas to write about, reading books and studying, etc…. it is all mental work. Cooking is a sort of mental work, but it feels like a different kind of creativity and it is more of a working with one’s hands than merely in one’s head and with the fingers typing. Cooking is not working with one’s hands like building a bridge or stud welding or hammering nails or working in a garden, but it is still an enjoyable handy work that won’t get you so messy as many different types of working with one’s hands….depending upon your method of cooking, of course!

I most definitely did not grow up in a vegetarian household, nor am I a vegetarian today. However, I do love eating vegetarian foods on a regular basis and perhaps one day I will completely convert. It does feel much better to me than eating meat. I feel better physically and enjoy the fact that no actual animal had to die for me to enjoy my meal.

About a year ago, I entered into a relationship with a wonderful man who is also a vegetarian. He lives by his value system in more ways than most people I have ever known. He has been a vegetarian for more than 20 years and I consider it to be just another one of the lovely ways in which he behaves in manners that connect with his belief system.

Naturally, I wanted to be supportive of that which I respected in this man and although he never once encouraged me to cook or asked me to cook, cooking for someone else is a great joy and pleasure for me. I was not the sort of woman who typically cooked for a man, however, as I have not always held men in the highest of regard as a general gender. However, I was moved to cook for this man immediately and it was so very enjoyable.

It was great fun discovering ways in which to cook vegetarian foods, experimenting with ideas in my head and changing up old recipes that I knew by heart to meet with vegetarian standards. As this year has progressed, it has been so much fun to watch the development and the progress of the times that I occasionally get to cook for him and the many different unique foods that I was able to prepare.

Last week he was sick with a terrible cold. I wanted to make him a sort of “miracle soup.” Perhaps I aim for the moon when only the lowest branches of the trees are real possibilities, but I believe that much of our physical reactions are directly connected to our thoughts and emotions. Therefore, it seemed to me to not be an impossible task, to create a healing vegetarian soup for my beloved man.

First, I will say that it did not heal him entirely, but he did get steadily better with each following day. There was noticeable improvement, even that day after his first bowl of this amazing soup. I do not feel that of all things that we should not brag about, that a wonderfully delicious recipe is included in that lot.

A recipe that results in a delectable sensation for the taste buds speaks for itself and brags of it’s creator all on its own, however, only for those who eat it and taste it. For all others and to encourage others to create such a work of art in food themselves, a bit of what might be called “bragging” is in order.

Here now I am going to attempt to share this recipe for this soup that I believe is the amazing miracle soup, a completely vegetarian recipe, that even carnivores can enjoy thoroughly.

Growing up and the majority of my life, I always thought that you must use a beef bouillon or a chicken bouillon to create a good soup base. During this past year, I have learned to create delicious soup without using any meat products whatsoever.

Recipe for Amazing Vegetarian Soup:

Take a big soup dish that you will be cooking on the stove top and at a later point in the cooking, you will be placing in the oven. Make sure that it is safe for stove tops and for putting in the oven, of course.

Fill this pot a quarter of the way full with water. (You will be adding water to your soup later on when it cooks down. Use your own judgement on this because it will not be mentioned again in this recipe.) You might want to use bottled/distilled water if you want to start with the purist water that you can. The things I have recently learned about our water supply in America are quite frightening. Of course, we have always known about the problems with international water supplies, but have been living under a false security blanket of beliefs that our water supply here was clean and pure, but this is simply not so. The EPA has recently had no choice but to admit the serious issues that are going on all around our country with regard to the water supply. The water treatment facilities have not been meeting the standards that are legally required for treatment of the sewage water and that water has been joining, unpurified, into our mainstream water supply. Not only this, but be careful with your bottled water as well, which is why I used the word “distilled.” About a quarter of the bottled water companies have been discovered providing absolutely no additional purification process to the water that they are bottling and selling. You can be certain that when you see a bottle labeled “spring water” that it is likely nothing more than tap water put into a bottle.

Now you may not feel a need to be concerned about this because you will be boiling your water as you cook it in this soup. This is merely a commentary for educational purposes and to help you decide what you want to do when you make this amazing vegetarian soup.

The first thing that you will want to do after you put your soup on the stove top fire or electrical coils, as the case may be, is to begin to add the seasoning. Have you ever heard of “seasoned salt?” If you haven’t heard of it, or you do not have it, it works wonders in many different recipes and I encourage you to go to your local grocery store and get some right away!

Add a generous amount of seasoned salt, about a fourth as much black pepper and about half as much garlic powder. Please note…I did not say “garlic salt” – I said Garlic Powder. The reason being that garlic salt will take your dish over the edge of the acceptable saltiness meter. If you use garlic salt, instead of garlic powder, then do not add the seasoned salt and do not expect the best tasting result, unless you just prefer all of your food to taste like a salt lick.

Now that you have added those seasonings, get some louisiana hot sauce or mccormick hot sauce and dash about 6 times into your soup base mix. Stir all of this up and let it simmer while you begin washing and peeling your veggies.

Wash and scrape your carrots first. Carrots and potatoes are the two veggies that will take the longest time to cook through to softness, so you should add them to the mix before anything else. Now slice your carrots very thin, perhaps to make sure that they are only about 1/8th or 1/4 inch in thickness. You could make them big chunks too if that is what your palate prefers.

If you are using baby carrots you could use about ten of these and you probably wouldn’t have to scrape them. If you are using full, adult carrots, then go ahead and use about 3-4, depending upon their size.

Now take only 2 potatoes. This is not to be a potato soup. The potatoes are only for an added substance and a part of the whole package. After washing and peeling your potatoes, cut them up into tiny cubes. Again, your preference is the deciding factor here.

Once you have put these veggies into your soup, make sure that you stir it well and that it continues at a good, even simmer. Now that you have stirred all of these together and it is simmering well, add about a cup of milk to your soup base. Stir that in and then add about 1/8 or 1/4 stick of butter or margarine. Of course, butter makes everything better, but if you are a cheapskate like me then you might just have margarine and that will work just fine. I may be committing a mortal sin by saying that and it may be healthier in some natural food perspectives to use butter, but what if you just don’t want to? Use either or.

Stir the soup and pull out your bag of fresh or frozen chopped spinach. I absolutely love spinach and this soup would not be half as amazing without the spinach in it. DO NOT USE CANNED SPINACH. Come on people! Canned spinach is just plain gross! Put about half a bag of spinach into the soup mix. I used the frozen chopped spinach myself and it worked wonderfully.

Stir well and keep it simmering while you now chop up a few stalks of celery. Again, the size of the celery bits is preference-related. It doesn’t change the flavor, only the texture, etc.  I recommend small 1/4 inch pieces.

After adding the celery to the soup and stirring again, (make sure to stir frequently enough to keep the bottom of the pan from any burn/stick, etc.) you will then need to clean and chop up two zucchini into small pieces.

Add your zucchini to the mix and check the flavor of the soup at this point now that the seasonings will have blended a bit to see if you need to add any more garlic powder, seasoned salt or hot sauce. Stir your soup well.

Now add about a cup and a half of shredded colby-jack cheese to the soup. Stir this well and go back to veggie cutting.

The last of the veggies that you will be cutting and adding is red onion. Take one medium sized red onion, wash it thoroughly and then dispose of the outer layer of the onion. Chop this onion into very large pieces and add it to the soup mix. Then chop a few green onions into very small pieces and add these to the soup as well.

Stir the soup mix well and put it into your oven (350 degrees fahrenheit)

Cook the soup in the oven for about 30-45 minutes and you will have an exquisite dinner. I used garlic bread as a side and served it with the soup. Milk is a good, hearty drink to have while eating your soup and garlic bread.

Voila! The Amazing Vegetarian Soup – Enjoy!

Ingredients List:

Seasoning Salt

Hot Sauce

Black Pepper

Red Onion

Green Onions

Zucchini

Colby-Jack Cheese

Milk

Water

Potato

Spinach

Celery

Butter

Carrots

Web Content provided by Alicia Crowder (Recipe Creator)