Moms Vegetable Soup

Now that fall is just around the corner, I have been thinking a lot about soups to warm up those cool fall nights at dinner time.  Growing up we always had a big garden and it was always producing an abundance of vegetables all summer long.  Now as you all know, mom was just like her grandma’s in canning food for the winter months.  So I can remember spending hours and hours picking peas, beans, carrots, potatoes (well those we dug up), radishes, sweet corn, and onions.  I am sure there was more, but my mind is still blocking all that childhood labor. LOL.

Honestly though.  All this work we did, ended up with fresh food for us for months.  Today everyone is telling me I should go green, buy local, and go natural.  I just laugh, because to me that was and still is my life.  I can not remember the last time I opened a can of beans or corn from the grocery store.  My freezer is filled with sweet corn my mom put up.  My pantry is filled with jars of green beans, tomato sauces and paste that she and I did.  Also filling the spaces on my pantry shelves are green tomatoes, apple sauce, apple butter, pizza sauce, jelly’s, jams, salsa’s, and even apple pie filling ready to go into a freshly made crust.  None of these came from a grocery store.  They all came from my or my moms kitchen.

So now that you know a little about our growing our own veggies, and putting them up for future use, we can discuss my favorite soup from my child hood.  Vegetable Soup.  You’d think after all that picking and working with vegetables all summer in the garden and kitchen, the last think I’d want to see was these same veggies again.  Well mom made a home made vegetable soup that would knock your socks off.  After browning the cubed up beef, she would add fresh tomatoes, beef stock and an array of vegetables and herbs.  Usually starting this early in the morning, and letting it simmer for hours till everything was just the right texture.  By then I had already snuck a few bites of the carrots or potatoes floating around.

I can still remember sitting at our kitchen table and looking out at snow coming down so hard in the winter you couldn’t see the woods behind our house, and I was sitting there eating hot steamy soup filled with what seemed to be vegetables pulled right from the garden.  This was because mom would always put up dozens of quart jars of veggie soup for the winter months.  Heck, I think I have a few jars in my pantry of that too.

So here’s our recipe for vegetable soup.  Please, if you have the ability, make bigger batches and can it for those cold winter months.  You will not regret the time you put in now to do this.

 

2  Tb oil, olive

1 lb beef soup bones

1 lb beef soup meat

2 large onions, chopped

4 15 oz can beef broth

1 qt water

6 large carrots sliced

8 large potatoes diced

3 cups fresh shelled peas

4 cups cut green beans

1 head of cabbage

1 15 oz can tomatoes, diced

0.5 tsp oregano,  dried

3 medium bay leaves, whole dried

1 Tb garlic powder

salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large soup pot with soup bones and soup meat. Brown on all sides. Add onions and sauté for 2 minutes. Add broth, water, vegetables, diced tomatoes, oregano, bay leaves and garlic powder. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for several hours, skimming off the foam that forms on the top. Remove bones and soup meat to a separate bowl; using a fork shred meat, discarding bones and fat. Place meat back in soup and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

Now sit back and enjoy the best and easiest vegetable soup you’ll ever have.  Feel free to add or delete any veggies you like or dislike.