Broccoli, Chicken, Quinoa Soup

Ingredients:

3 cups cooked quinoa

5 cups water

1 cup chicken broth (or an additional cup of water if you do not have any)

1 cup chopped carrots

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup chopped mushroom

2 cups chopped broccoli

2 cups diced cooked organic chicken

4 T flour (I used freshly ground soft white wheat.)

1 T olive oil

2 cloves of garlic - diced

1 tsp basil

1 tsp oregano

salt and pepper to taste

In a large stock pot, saute carrots, onion, celery, mushroom, broccoli, and garlic until just slightly tender.  Add water, chicken stock, chicken, quinoa, basil, oregano, salt, and pepper.  Simmer on medium.  When the liquid has been heated, remove 1 cup of the broth (in a measuring cup or small bowl) and with a wisk or fork add 4 tablespoons of flour and stir rapidly.  This will begin to thicken.  Slowly add this liquid back to the soup, stirring as you pour it.  Continue to allow the soup to simmer until flavors have had time to blend together.  Serve immediately or turn the soup off and and let it sit, continuing to season, until you are ready to eat. (I allowed mine to simmer for about 5 minutes then turned it off.  We ate it about an hour later.)

I served this with homemade bread.  A fresh salad would be great with it as well.  You could double this recipe and freeze the leftover portion in order to have a quick meal to pull out of the freezer.

You could easily add different vegetables or leave out the ones you do not have on hand.  I had several leftover organic chicken legs.  I used the broth I had saved from baking my chicken and chopped the chicken up.  (Note - I always add more water to the chicken I bake in order to have broth to reserve for something later.  You can freeze the broth until you are ready to use it!)

Soups make an easy way to use up what you have in the refrigerator.  This soup was created by what I had leftover from the week.  Try creating your own recipe sometime.  Just take the leftovers that sound like they might be good together!

Canning Vegetable Soup

I have always wanted to learn how to can foods but had made it more difficult in my mind than it really is, so I put it off (for years actually I am sad to say).  Last weekend I was inspired.  I saw Patty Tatum at the Saturday morning Oxford Farmer's Market.  She was picking out lots of okra, so I asked her what she was doing.  She said, "Today is vegetable soup day."  She explained that every summer she picks a day at the market to get what she needs to make homemade vegetable soup, makes a large quantity, and then freezes it for the winter.  

I figured if I went ahead and bought everything there would be no turning back..........  I do not have enough freezer space, so I knew canning would be my best option.  I welcomed the challenge and made my purchases - tomatoes, corn, okra, peas, green beans, lima beans, onion, red bell peppers, garlic, and new potatoes.

 

I pureed my tomatoes in the food processor and poured them into a large stock pot.  I chopped my onion, garlic, and bell peppers in the food processor as well and added them.  I let this simmer while I was washing and chopping the rest of the vegetables.  I added them to the tomatoes and added filtered water and seasonings as well.

Then I cooked the vegetable soup until the vegetables were all tender.  It looked to beautiful in the pot and smelled and tasted wonderful.

Thanks to Jo Ruth Pruett in Tula, I was able to borrow a pressure canner that would hold 7 quarts at a time.  The manual that came with the pressure canner explained how to can different kinds of food.  This was very helpful.  I knew I needed to can in quarts to allow more for my family of 5!  I had always been intimidated by a pressure canner and yes, I read the instructions at least 5 times before I started.  But as usual, once I did it, it did not turn out being as hard as it seemed beforehand!

The most challenging part was investing the time to wash and cut up all the vegetables.  But when I think about how much time in the fall I invest in just one smaller pot of soup it makes perfect sense to go ahead and make a large quantity one time and then have it available to just open up and serve.

The main reason I wanted to can vegetable soup was that I wanted the advantage of having all ingredients that were vine ripened and grown locally to maximize the nutrition for my family.  They are in glass jars which will not leach anything into the final product and there are absolutely NO additives or preservatives.

It was so much easier than I expected, and I value being able to do large quantities at a time in order to maximize my efforts.  No doubt I am looking for my next canning project.........