Heather's Vegetable Soup

This one comes from an old McDougall newsletter, and is currently posted to the McDougall website recipe section. Here's how Mary McDougall posted it:

Vegetable Soup
Prep: 15 minutes Cook: 60 minutes
Serves: 6
By Heather McDougall

          This is a soup that my daughter, Heather, makes often for her family. Our grandsons, Jaysen & Ben, love it and will often eat several bowls of this for dinner.

Ingredients
4 cups vegetable broth
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups water
1 yam, peeled and cubed
1 white potato, peeled and cut in large chunks
15 ounce can chopped tomatoes
15 ounce can white beans, drained and rinsed
1 bay leaf
1 tsp basil
1-2 cups chard, chopped
1/2 cup uncooked pasta

Directions
Place 1/4 cup of the broth in a large soup pot. Add the onion, celery, carrot and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften slightly, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining broth, the water, yam, potato, tomatoes, beans, bay leaf and basil. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and cook for about 45 minutes, until all vegetables are tender. Stir in the chard and pasta. Cook for about 10 minutes until pasta is tender

The recipe is fine for all versions of the McDougall program (and most other WFPB ones, too), but if you're following the Maximum Weight Loss Program as written by Doctor McDougall, omit the pasta. If you're following Jeff Novick's revised MWLP guidelines for pasta, you can safely leave them in.

First, a moment of silence for my THIRD Vidalia Chop Wizard device. In the past, it was the blade part that broke. Today, the lid split in 2 down by the hinge.

I was able to finish chopping the carrots that were already in there by leaning one arm down on the hinge end and putting the rest of my weight on the other side to push down onto the carrot quarters. As you all know, you have to slice your carrots first into small and thin enough chunks to fit in the small section where the blades are, then slice the pieces thin enough the long way because this chopper has trouble chopping anything firmer than a hard boiled egg. As soon as I finished those pieces of carrots that were embedded in the blades I pushed this chopper aside, grabbed my knife, and cut the rest of the carrots the old fashioned way. No more of these choppers for me - I wasted enough money on them!

Now, on to what I did with the recipe.

Let's see, I used frozen diced onions, dehydrated celery, 2 small peeled red potatoes, half a large Hannah yam, petite diced no-salt added canned tomatoes, no-salt added small white beans, and frozen diced collards instead of fresh chard. You already know about the carrots. For the pasta I used Tinkyada shells. I looked around in 2 different Whole Foods stores and couldn't find any smaller gluten-free pasta shapes, like ditalini or orzo, in any brand. Turned out they were small enough.

Look at this nice, chunk soup! Loads of veggies, good tasting broth, very filling. We finished it off, again with me having one bowl and hubby having 2 full bowls (Plus some bread for dunking. I don't know where he puts it all!).

The pasta is a bit plump because I forgot to turn the heat off 10 minutes after adding the pasta and collards. I set the timer, and remember turning off the timer, and I swear I got up and turned the gas off, but when we finally went into the kitchen to eat I saw the flame was still on. Thank goodness I use those aluminum flame tamers when I know food has to heat on low simmer! This stove runs so hot I have to use 2 at a time to keep things from boiling away on the lowest setting.

Right now my husband has a cold, and has been coughing and sneezing, not just during the day but during the night, too. When he coughs, I wake up, and I'm awake for at least an hour after that. I just about doze off again and he coughs or sneezes again. This has been going on for a while now. But remember, I'm the one who's been coughing since mid-August and waking him up, but luckily, he can usually fall right back to sleep within seconds of waking. Anyway, during those sleepless hours many things toss and tumble around in this crazed head of mine, and one of those things last night was this soup. There was a nagging feeling that I had forgotten something. I had no idea what - I had all my ingredients measured out or out of the cabinets ahead of time. Looking over the recipe when I put it in this post, I saw what I did wrong - I forgot to add the additional 2 cups of water. To be honest, it didn't need it. Maybe when my appetite returns to normal and I'm eating larger amounts of food again I'll appreciate the extra 2 cups of this soup, but it was fine for us yesterday.

And this soup will be made again. I've said many times that the Mary (and Heather) McDougall recipes are family favorites, and this is yet another one to add to the list.