Stone Soup

My family and I went to IKEA several months ago and we had lunch while we were there. I had the vegetable soup and ever since that moment I have been looking for a soup that closely resembles that vegetable soup. With no luck I have tried a few different recipes, and lately I have been thinking about the fairy tale entitled "Stone Soup". In this tale individuals tell their unsuspecting neighbors that they are going to make the most delicious soup out of just a stone and the neighbors one by one give ingredients to these individuals believing what they have to give is superior in nature and can only improve a soup. They give these objects without having the knowledge of the other neighbors making donations to the soup. In the end the individuals have a wonderful soup and the neighbors all ask where the stone is, and the reply is of course that they chose to leave it out of the soup this time. The moral of the story is to not be tricked out of your hard earned earnings. However, what made me think of it was this soup and how I like to throw everything and the kitchen sink into my stock pot and make a soup. Yesterday I made a yummy soup, definitely not Stone Soup, but delicious just the same.

The first step was to chop up carrots and celery...I would add onions, but my husband just will not eat anything I put onions in (though he eats them when my mother does...hmm...) and garlic and then I sauteed them for approximately 5 minutes. I prefer my vegetables to be crispy rather than mushy, but if you want to you can cook them for a longer period of time. I also do not for soups like this make specific measurements to my vegetables the more the better.

At this point I added zucchini to the stock pot and I wanted this to be the star of the soup so I added more of this than the other vegetables in the pot. I sauteed the vegetables for approximately 4 minutes longer.

To make the broth for the soup I used about 5 cups of chicken broth a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes, which is what makes that lovely red color in the broth in the picture below.

At this point this soup is absolutely delicious and you could let it simmer for about 10 minutes then eat, but as I said before I like to put everything and the kitchen sink in my soups so I added some of my fresh basil leaves and a small amount of Heavy Whipping Cream to the broth before simmering the soup. The result was fabulous. My little boys and my husband loved the soup and this will be something that I do again. The finished product is below. To each serving I added some separately cooked macaroni noodles, however, you could add rice as well. I recommend that if you choose to add either you cook it separately and add it to each serving, because if you have leftovers and the noodles are in with the soup they will continue to soak up the broth, leaving you with little broth and soggy noodles. This soup is not Stone Soup, but it is pretty darn good.