Soup Weather - Warm Winter Soup

While looking for my old favorite sewing shows on PBS yesterday I discovered that they've all been moved to a new PBS station called Create TV. My poor DVR! Thanks to all those Hallmark Channel Christmas movies it's already hovering in the low 90% range, and all these sewing shows will quickly bring it over the top. Luckily the cable company is tripling the drive space come January 1, so I have to watch as much as I can and delete the old to make room for the next 3 weeks worth of stuff I'm finding. I finally finished the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade this morning, so that freed up three hours.



Along with those sewing shows, I noticed they're also running The Jazzy Vegetarian, a show I only heard about before but searches on our cable provider's web site always said "not found." So that's another show to DVR, and already it recorded something, her show on her favorite soups.

I already had another meal scheduled for dinner, but luckily I was depending on leftovers for my lunch, and there were none in the fridge today (I know, a rarity!), so I had a good excuse to make this one, called Winter Warming Soup, perfect for the 22 degree weather out there and the half foot of snow predicted for this weekend.

Winter Warming Soup

8 SERVINGS

6 stalks celery, with leaves, chopped
1 sweet onion, chopped
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
8 cups vegetable broth
1 to 2 teaspoons organic tamari
3 cups water, more as needed
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
5 medium red potatoes, peeled and chopped
5 carrots, chopped
2 cups chopped green beans
6 large cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 can (15 ounces) white beans, drained and rinsed
Sea salt 
Freshly ground pepper

Put the celery, onion, Italian seasoning, and 1/3 cup of the broth in a large soup pot over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 8 minutes, adding more broth as needed, 1 tablespoon at a time, if the mixture becomes dry. Stir in the tamari and cook, stirring occasionally, until the celery and onion are tender, about 8 minutes.

Stir in the remaining broth, the water, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, carrots, green beans, and mushrooms. Decrease the heat, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Stir in the white beans and simmer until the vegetables are tender, 15 to 20 minutes longer, adding more water as needed to achieve the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve piping hot.

The directions on the page are slightly different than the ones on the show, but the soup is just as delicious.

I had to revise it a bit to accommodate my husband's gout diet, so no beans or mushrooms. I added double the amount of seasonings and used the Italian Herbs from my Penzey's stash.

I had a small bowl at lunchtime, and both my husband and myself had some before dinner.

It took about an hour to get all those veggies chopped, because I first had to peel them all then cut, and then my son wanted to help so he snapped all the green beans to size. Bored adult children get underfoot as much as younger ones! LOL

Delicious! She was right - the bits of sweet potatoes do add a nice, hearty touch to this otherwise light soup. A keeper.