aka: what to do with all those ignored vegetables at the bottom of the fridge!
Let’s talk Lego!
My husband, bless his cotton socks, doesn’t do a lot of cooking. He can peer into a full refrigerator and not come up with a single idea for dinner. Shelves of vibrant vegetables get ignored in favour of carbohydrate rich bowls of pasta and porridge.
He says it’s a bit like Lego. He likes Lego. He likes Lego kits, where all the pieces are included and there are clear and concise instructions as to what to do with them to make the project.
I, on the other hand, am one of those weirdos, he says, preferring to buy a box of 5000 random pieces off eBay and then create something magnificent, from scratch, using only my imagination to guide me.
Our brains are just wired differently.
This soup recipe is one of those random Lego creations. Emptying out the contents of my fridge after spending a week in hospital with the eldest (for that story visit I Think My Teenage Son Has Appendicitis!), I noticed the vegetables had been completely neglected (yet the quantity of sugary treats multiplied exponentially every day I was gone!).
A week on hospital food has left me craving vegetables. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful I was allowed to stay with my son through his ordeal and that they fed me at all, but I was seriously missing my daily blender or juicer fix! I’ve been participating in Jumpstart 2015, a challenge to get us all eating more soups and drinking more smoothies and fresh juices.
JUMPSTART 2015: THE RULES
- Enjoy a freshly made smoothie or juice (made of mostly vegetables) for breakfast and lunch
- Drink more water (I’m terribly guilty of not drinking enough water, unless coffee counts?)
- No alcohol (optional, but I think the majority of my weight gain last year came from wine calories so it’s teetotal 2015 for me!)
- Eat more soups – chunky or smooth as long as they are loaded with vegetables!
- Normal meal in the evening (In my case, on days where I manage to complete a P90X exercise workout this meal will be rich in protein with a generous serving of vegetables and small serving of carbohydrates)
This was my lunch yesterday, but don’t let the sunny, summery light fool you – this hearty, warming soup is perfect for winter. I deliberately left the vegetables chunky as I wanted a soup I could chew, and the spinach cashew pesto is a perfect accompaniment. Again, I left this fairly chunky for the texture, and the flavour combination of the two – the warming paprika soup and the creamy spinach pesto – perfection! Vegetable Lego!
Chunky Vegetable Soup with Spinach-Cashew Pesto
Ingredients
For the vegetable soup
- 1 or 2 tbsp sunflower oil depending on if you are calorie counting or not!
- 1.5 medium onions finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic finely chopped
- 3 medium carrots peeled and diced
- 3 sticks celery diced
- 1 large leek quartered lengthwise and finely sliced
- 2 tbsp tomato puree
- 2 tbsp smoked paprika
- 3 fresh ripe tomatoes diced
- 200 grams broccoli florets
- 200 grams cauliflower florets
- 1 tsp dried basil
- 1000 ml vegetable stock or more, depending on how thin you want it
- freshly ground black pepper
For the spinach-cashew pesto
- 50 grams baby leaf spinach
- 80 grams cashew nuts
- 1 clove garlic
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- pinch Shetland sea salt to taste
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 60 ml extra virgin olive oil
Affiliate Links
This recipe card may contain affiliate ingredient and equipment links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Instructions
- For the soup, heat the oil in a large soup pan and gently saute the onions, garlic, carrots, celery and leek over a medium heat until it all starts to soften.
- Add the tomato puree and stir well.
- Add the remaining ingredients and cover with vegetable stock, adding more if you want a watery soup. I wanted a thick, chunky soup so I only used 1 litre.
- Cover and simmer gently for 20-25 minutes until all the vegetables are tender.
- To prepare the pesto, pop all the ingredients in a blender and pulse until it reaches the desired consistency. I left mine rather chunky so there were bits of nuts to chew in each mouthful of soup.
OTHER BLOGGERS TAKING PART IN JUMPSTART 2015
YOU! – If you would like to join in too, tweet me @TangoRaindrop your photos and recipe tips using the hashtag #Jumpstart15 and I will retweet all that I see. I’d love to try out your tried and tested recipes, and, if you like, I could even feature them on my blog (duly credited, of course!).
Bookmark or use Bloglovin to track what my Jumpstart 2015 blogging friends are up to – their recipes, tips and progress!
Follow Jacqueline Meldrum’s board Jumpstart 2015 on Pinterest.
Linking up with a few food blogging challenges:
- Super Soup by Jo at Jo’s Kitchen
- Extra Veg by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle over at Utterly Scrummy
- Credit Crunch Munch from Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All
- The Spice Trail by Vanesther over at Bangers and Mash (Temple Food)
- No Waste Food Challenge by Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary
- No Croutons Required by Jacqueline over at Tinned Tomatoes and Lisa from Lisa’s Kitchen
OTHER RECIPES TO USE UP NEGLECTED VEGETABLES:
Baked Rice and Egg Pots with Roasted Vegetables by Fuss Free Flavours
Roast Tomato and Pepper Soup by Maison Cupcake
Spicy Coconut Milk Soup by Coffee & Vanilla
Parsnip, Carrot & Lentil Soup by Tinned Tomatoes
Winter Vegetable Soup by Franglais Kitchen
Cream of Leek, Potato & Carrot Soup by Fab Food 4 All
If you want to be kept up to date on my recipes, occasional craft tutorials, adventure stories and giveaways then please subscribe to my weekly newsletter; it gets sent out every Monday morning if there is new content. Your email address won’t be passed on to anyone, you will never be spammed and you are free to unsubscribe at any time, no questions asked. Make sure you confirm your subscription or you won’t receive the newsletter – if it hasn’t arrived check your junk mail folder.
[wysija_form id=”1″]
Elizabeth’s Kitchen Diary uses the Froothie Optimum 9400 blender, and the Froothie Optimum 600 slow juicer to make her juices, soups and smoothies. These are affiliate links, meaning if you buy a blender or juicer through them we will earn a small commission. This is not a paid post and all thoughts and opinions are our own.
I Think My Teenage Son Might Have Appendicitis
Going to give this a go this week. It looks delicious 🙂
Spinach-cashew pesto! I’m in love with this idea and am so happy I stumbled upon this recipe! And then to use it to top your soup/stew! Definitely giving this a try.
Looks so warming and great nutritional value
Looks hearty – ’tis the season.
So healthy and filling. It looks so freah and the pesto tops it off a treat
Fantastic soup recipe
I’ve made this for inner this evening! Thank you! Smells delicious!
Trying this…looks amazing
Oh I love the addition of that lovely bright vibrant pesto !
I love a chunky veg soups and the addition of the pesto sounds great. My spinach (or actually chard which I find easier to grow) is too small to harvest yet but I reckon a wild garlic or a nettle pesto would be lovely too.
I’m going to try this : )
Well you certainly produced a gorgeous result with your ‘LEGO soup’ – looks wonderful.
Had to laugh at the neglected veggies and multiplying sugary treats. A lovely bowl of soup and the Spinach Cashew Pesto is inspired!
This soup is full of vegetables. So healthy.
Chunky vegetable is the best soup; healthy and tasty.
That looks delightful. I’ve just started adding nutritional yeast to my pestos etc and must say I love the taste it adds.
I love your vegetable Lego creation and the spinach and cashew pesto sounds yummy too. Just the kind of soup I like to make to clear out the fridge, with the added bonus that it’s so delicious and healthy to boot. Thanks so much for linking up with the Temple Food Spice Trail challenge.
This is my sort of soup – love making them but I really need to make more pesto. And cashews and spinach are often in the house.
Your husband sounds like mine – he loves to tell me that the fridge is full but there is nothing for him to eat – he is more into ikea flatpack which I can’t stand doing but I love to clean out the fridge with a good soup.
This sounds delicious! Just what we need right now to keep warm!
The PERFECT meal for recuperation! Looks incredibly nutritious and tasty. I love meals like this (especially when the weather is so wintry.
You did well to prepare something when your son has been so poorly! It looks so nourishing!
Ha! So funny! Your soup looks gorgeous and that pesto just brings the whole thing to life! I’m more like you than your husband but my soups end up like brown or green sludge (albeit tasty sludge) if I’m not too careful!
There’s a decided lack of fresh herbs in my kitchen at the moment (and the builders have turned my herb rockery into a five foot deep hole!) so I wanted to come up with a green garnish with what I had. The pesto totally worked 🙂
Lush soup Elizabeth – love the addition of smoked paprika:-) Thanks for linking to my soup and hosting #creditcrunchmunch this month.
Thanks Camilla – my pleasure! 🙂
That soup looks delicious Elizabeth! I would never even suspect you have used leftover neglected veggies from the fridge… and spinach cashew pesto is such a great idea!
And thank you for mentioning my coconut milk soup recipe.
Thanks Margot! 😀
It looks great! And I bet it is very warming! I am not good in cooking soups if they’re not creams, but yeah, that one sounds good to me:) soups are really great finish of a day:)
I’m not very good at cooking cream-of soups! 🙂 I really ought to experiment more though…
This looks great – I love soups that are like stews and I make a variation on this quite often with leftover veg. Glad your son is better too, Helen x
Thanks Helen 🙂 Leftover veg really can be quite versatile!
That soup looks SO good! Been meaning to get more into soups recently but I can never get the recipes quite right. Will be trying this one out very very soon.
Viki – vikibell.com
Soups can be very forgiving – just plonk ingredients in and tinker away! 🙂
My husband is exactly the same. It baffles me how he can’t come up with meals with a fridge full of ingredients.
A delicious healthy soup. Yum!
Heehee, men! 😀