Quick Soup, Healthy Soup

Most of the time, I can let beans soak or cook in the crockpot, simmer the vegetables, and have a nice soup from scratch.    Other times, I forget to soak the beans or don't have time to saute veggies but still want healthy soup from scratch.    Last night was one of the latter times.   

A quick cooking but still healthy made from scratch soup ~ double the ingredients easily doubles the amount of soup you have.   For us, that's still just a few nights' of soup, for others, it would make enough to freeze half.  


Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 large bell pepper, chopped
• 4-5 cloves garlic (to taste), smashed or chopped
• 1 cup water

Heat a soup pot on the stove and add the above ingredients on medium (optional: add 1 tsp olive oil for sauteeing, or just water saute).   Let cook while you finish assembling the ingredients.

• 1/2 pound carrots
• 1/2 pound purple cabbage
• 1/2 pound of mushrooms, sliced
• other vegetables (whatever you have - frozen or fresh - that you want to add in)
• fresh or frozen greens (kale, spinach, collards, etc.)

Add all ingredients to food processor or chopper and put in soup pot as you are finished.

• 1/2 pound dry lentils - rinsed well
• Add lentils plus 4 cups of water (or 2 cups water, 2 cups veg broth).
• frozen sweet corn (organic, unsweetened)

  
When the soup is finished cooking, season with your favorites to taste (pepper, garlic powder, and a touch of cayenne) and add a bag of frozen sweet corn and let it heat through.  

You can easily double or triple this.  It was gone in 1-1/2 meals here...even the bean-hating little guy ate it, and it freezes very well.

Super fast cooking instructions - use your food processor.  Get out your veggies, wash and clean them.  Then using the food processor, process the onions, garlic, peppers with the S blade and add to the soup pot to start the saute.   Change to the grater blade, and process the carrots, cabbage, and other veggies (cauliflower, broccoli, sno peas, etc!  Bags of frozen vegs work great in this.)   Then swap to the slicer blade and do the mushrooms.  Drop these vegetables plus frozen or fresh greens (spinach, kale) in the soup pot and add the lentils & water.   Wash/rinse out the food processor immediately, pop the unused veggies back in the fridge - and done.   Soup in 10 minutes prep time, 40 miinutes cook time.
 
Crockpot instructions:  (optional, saute seasoning vegetables in a pan first, then add to crockpot with other ingredients as above. )   Cook on high until lentils are finished, about 4 hours.

Shopping list:
1 large onion
1 large bell pepper
1/2 lb. mushrooms
1 garlic bulb
carrots
purple cabbage
dry lentils
frozen sweet corn (no sugar added)
frozen kale or collards or spinach