I have been having intense cravings for, of all things, soup. Sheri has today off for Veteran's Day, and I normally don't have classes on Tuesdays, so I thought having a nice pot of soup simmering on the stove all day would be good.

Last night we decided to first watch the movie we rented (Willard), and then go out for a late dinner. During dinner is when I got the idea to make a late night Meijer run and pick up soup fixings.

I picked up a pound of already cubed stew meat, and a one pound bag of Freshlike® frozen soup vegetables. I was really happy to find the soup vegetables. It has:

carrots
potatoes
peas
celery
green beans
corn
onions
lima beans

That is all I picked up for soup. When I got home, at about 11:00 PM, I browned the meat, with a little oil, in my 8 quart stock pot. I then filled the pot about half way with cold water, and added some garlic powder and a little ground black pepper.

I then covered it and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Then I skimmed off the foam and added a 14 ounce can of diced tomatoes with green chilies. If I had just a can of regular tomatoes I would have added that instead, but that is the only can of tomato I had on hand. I also added some dried oregano, parsley, and a couple teaspoons of commercial chicken stock concentrate. You can get this at Gordon's in a one pound tub. It is my favorite and I always keep it on hand. You have to refrigerate it once you open it, and it is a soft paste. Not nearly as salty as the bouillon cubes you get in the grocery store, and much more flavorful. When I can, I use this instead of salt in recipes.

I let that simmer on low overnight. About 9:30 AM I added the bag of frozen vegetables and a ¼ cup of Kashi pilaf. I didn't have any barley on hand. The Kashi pilaf only has:

whole oats
long grain brown rice
whole rye
whole hard red winter wheat
whole triticale
whole buckwheat
whole barley
sesame seeds

All of the grains are unmilled, unrolled, etc. Just the entire grain berry. It actually added a very neat texture to the soup. Because the berries are whole, it also didn't absorb as much soup stock as just rolled barley would have. Try it.

I let the vegetables and Kashi cook for about an hour, and then brought a bowl for each of us upstairs for a nice hearty brunch.

I have always struggled with soups until now. I think the best advice with soups is restraint. Because all of the flavors of anything you add are released from long cooking, it is very easy to overpower the final product. My last two batches of chili and this batch of beef vegetable have turned out very good. I think I finally have conquered soups!

I don't like to cook soup from a recipe. The ideal, to me anyway, of soup is to use whatever you have on hand.

Vegetable soup is my all-around favorite. Sure, there are the luxury soups or special occasion soups like "cream of's", bisques, chowders, etc, but for day to day subsistence, nothing beats beef-vegetable-barley.