This is a recipe built off a memory. When I was small, I ate only two things for lunch: Campbell’s chicken noodle or vegetarian vegetable soup. This went on for years, and I still love them both, but my own chicken noodle soup is better (just saying!), and I realized that I needed to recreate the vegetarian vegetable soup. I remember moving the little alphabet letters around with my spoon, trying to make up words. What kid wouldn’t have been fascinated: it’s a meal and a word game at the same time! This is a great weekend lunch or after-school cup ‘o soup item. It keeps for days, and the flavor just gets richer.

Sometimes a recipe for America’s Table can take many attempts to get a good result, and the road to maintaining high quality for all recipes is littered with failed (and sometimes abandoned) attempts. You’ll never see the souffled macaroni and cheese, or vegetable pot au feu recipes – they just didn’t cut it – but someday I’m going to figure out how to do those baked Alaska ice cream cones! This vegetable soup recipe is an amalgam of four different recipes, and by George, I think we’ve got it!

So much of childhood is made of up of little memories like the vegetarian vegetable soup – don’t you wonder what meals your kids will remember?

Vegetarian Vegetable Soup

Serves: 8

Prep time: 50 minutes

Use any vegetables you like for this soup – it doesn’t ever have to taste exactly the same way twice.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil
8 pearl onions, quartered
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1-13.5 ounce can of stewed tomatoes
1 leek, thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
2 carrots, diced
1 turnip, diced
1 parsnip, diced
1 pint cremini mushrooms, quartered
¼ pound green beans, cut into 1” lengths
1 cup peas, fresh or frozen
1 cup lima beans, fresh or frozen
1 zucchini, chopped into one inch pieces and quartered
1 cup cooked alphabet pasta
1 quart vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Saute garlic and onion in olive oil in a large five-quart pot, stirring frequently, until onion is translucent.
Add tomato paste and tomatoes and cook until tomatoes begin to caramelize.
Add carrots and celery.
Add stock, salt and pepper.
Bring to a boil, then add all the vegetables except zucchini,
Cook on medium heat until vegetables are tender. Add zucchini and pasta.
Simmer two more minutes and serve.