easy vegetarian soup!

Awhile back I decided I'd like to be able to make my own soup. For the most part canned vegetarian soups are expensive, come in small cans and aren't always available in small towns or bargain grocery stores. Vegetarians are poor too people! So I set out to create a soup that could be made by anyone, anywhere, regardless of season.

WHAT YOU NEED:

3 cans of Swanson Vegetarian Broth

1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables of your choice. What I do is I usually buy one bag of either a California Blend or Italian Blend and then another bag of just regular mixed vegetables.

1-2 red potatoes

1/4 -1/2 clove of garlic depending on your personal taste

seasoning according to taste

(Optional: rice or noodles)

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

Add all three cans of vegetable broth to large pot on medium heat. Add garlic to broth.

While waiting for the broth to warm, wash and slice or dice your potatoes (again according to your personal taste)

When broth becomes warm, add potatoes.

The add either an entire bag of frozen vegetables, or if you plan to mix your veggies, do half and half of each. Two bags would over power the broth.

Wait for soup to boil and reduce heat. I typically let this simmer anywhere from an hour to four hours, depending on how long I have to get it made.

Stir every so often and make sure to taste it. As the broth cooks, the flavor will change and you may need to add your spices of choice.

To beef up the soup (pardon the expression) you can also add rice or noodles. I recommend boiling this addition in an additional pot until it's ALMOST done (or you know, al dente) add the noodles or rice about 10-15 minutes before you plan on serving the dish, in order to keep them from getting too mushy.

This could also be done with fresh vegetables, but I'm keeping in mind that not everyone has access to affordable produce in the winter months. The whole mess usually costs me between 3-5 dollars to complete and will serve 8. It also keeps pretty well in tupper wear and also reheats well. Good option if you're trying to take your own lunch to work/school/etc.

mixed veggie casserole

About a month ago I posted my recipe for Green Bean Casserole, which is one of my favorite vegetarian holiday foods. When I served it to The Boyfriend, he ate it but I also noticed he was picking out all of the green beans. Turns out he likes green beans about as much as he likes mushrooms, which is not at all. Oh well that's what dating is for, to learn what other people like and don't like.

Being as I love this dish and I also love casserole in general because it's sometimes two meals at once, I decided to give it another shot. Last night I cooked up what can only be described as mixed veggie casserole.

What You Need:

1-Can of potato soup. I used a roasted garlic potato soup.
1-Can of mixed veggies
1-Can of cream of mushroom soup
1-Can of French's Famous Fried Onions.
crutons

What You Do:

Pop open the potato soup and add to a pyrex dish.

Mix in the can of mixed veggies

Open up the mushroom soup. If you got condensed soup DO NOT ADD THE MILK, the mixture will get too mushy and you'll get more of a soupy texture and less casserole action. Add mushroom soup.

add either crushed croutons, precrushed breadcrumbs, or if you're feeling crunchy do whole croutons. Stir mixture around.

add about two handfuls of the dried onions. stir in.

Heat oven to about 350 degrees and bake for about 20 minutes.

Pull dish out after 20 minutes, stir in some pepper and seasonings of your choice. Coat the top of the dish with dried onions, these will become your crust as you bake the dish further.

put back in the oven for another 10-20 minutes or until hot and crisp on top.

let stand for about 5 minutes before serving.

A word of caution: this is a really filling and delicious dish. It's also not very pretty. But it worked, I got my casserole deliciousness on and The Boyfriend didn't pick out any of the ingredients this time around. Score.

a twist on the green bean casserole

A few years ago my vegetarian friend Russ was living with Jen Wa and I at one of crack house apartments and wanted to make us dinner. This was the first time I had the Famous French's Green Bean Casserole. He and I went to the store and I handed him a Pyrex dish and about half an hour later we had some delicious dinner.

Over the years though, I've made this recipe with a few tweaks, mostly to satisfy The Boyfriend who doesn't really like green beans, mushrooms or anything without a steak in it. Last night I made it again and for the first time ever, there weren't any leftovers! Triumph! Here's what I did.

WHAT TO USE:

1 can or 9 oz of green beans (I like the French of Fancy cut beans the best)
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of cream of potato soup
1 can of French's French Fried Onions (really these make the dish)
1 cup of crutons (I used garlic cheese flavor)
Milk
casserole dish

WHAT TO DO:

1-Open and drain green beans. Set aside.

2-Add can of cream of mushroom soup to casserole dish.

3-Add can of cream of potato soup to casserole dish

4-fill one of the empty cans with milk and stir into dish

5- stir in green beans

6- stir in crutons.

7- salt and pepper to taste. bake on 350 in oven for 20-30 minutes or until hot and thick.

8-remove dish from oven, add French's fried onions to the top of the dish like a crust

9-replace in oven and bake for 5 minutes or until top of casserole is golden brown.

10- remove from oven and let stand for about 5 minutes

The crutons and potato soup mask the mushroom soup and give the casserole more depth and texture, making it seem more like a meal than a sidedish. The Boyfriend had seconds and thirds, and he's a big meat eater, so I must have been doing something right.

Best of all, this is a fairly cheap dish to throw together and in our house, baking something in the oven is almost better than turning on the heater! Enjoy!

my breakfast cereal subsititute

Okay so everyone knows some cereals have animal products in them. And to be honest, I HATE OATMEAL. There I said it. Oatmeal is flippin' gross. Sue me.

So when I was a kid my mom made me something else on cold mornings and I finally reproduced it Vegan style yesterday morning and wanted to share.

Rice Cereal!

Now this takes about 10-20 minutes depending on how long your white rice takes to cook. My bag of white rice said 20 minutes but it was done in 10. I have a gas stove, so who knows, maybe it's hotter.

What you need:

1 cup of white rice

Soy/Rice/Almond milk

Vegan Butter

Sugar or sweetener substitute

How to do it:

Step 1 - Boil your rice. As mentioned before, this could take anywhere from 10 -20 minutes, so if you're busy in the mornings, you can always make the rice the nice before and stick it in the fridge. It works either way.

Step 2- Put rice in a bowl and add your milk product (I used Rice Dream Original) to taste.

Step 3- Add your butter product to taste

Step 4- Add your sugar product to taste

Step 5- Stuff in the microwave and heat it up like you would instant oatmeal. This should be good at about 1 minute on high (obviously you can do this on the stove as well, but this is all about the fast, it is BreakFast after all.)

Step 6- Pull out and stir around. Stick in face. Be full.

You can dress this mess up just like you do oatmeal as well. Brown sugar or cinnamon or fruit. It tastes very similar to oatmeal without the gross texture.

Plus this is a fairly cheap breakfast to make and as far as I know, kids like it!

We're all poor, I get it

So today I was scanning some of the vegetarian blogs I read and someone posted a link to a website where you can feed your family of 4 for a week on 40 bucks. Now I know this is possible. Neither Jen Wa or myself are rich by any means, but it's always interesting to see someone else's take on it.

Over at HillbillyHouseWife, they've posted the menu that they use for this sort of eating and I was pleased to see it's almost entirely meat free and could be veganized with a few substitutions. Not that I'm all about converting others to my life style, but it's nice when others realize it's not all that bad.