Recipe: Best … soup … ever

Every Friday is Health Tips Day at Zen Habits.

OK, I may have oversold this recipe in the headline a bit, but trust me, you’ll love it. It’s easy to make, it’s vegan, it’s healthy, and it is perfection. I can’t get enough of it. Go out and buy the ingredients and make it today!

Ingredients

• Various veggies, diced (you can use any kind that you like, but I usually throw in squash (butternut, though any kind is great), celery, carrots, corn, fresh spinach and broccoli — zucchini would be another good choice)
• One yellow onion, diced
• A couple cloves of garlic, diced
• Vegetable bullion, four cubes
• 1 package pasta (any kind except the longer ones like spaghetti or linguini is good — I like the bow-tie pasta or shell pasta)
• 1 can each kidney beans and white beans
• 1 can stewed tomatoes
• water
• olive oil, a few tablespoons
• salt and black pepper and Italian seasoning to taste

Directions

• Dice all the veggies and open the cans of beans (and corn if you’re using canned corn); be sure not to skin the squash — just scoop out the seeds and dice it up
• Heat up the olive oil in a large pot and saute the onion and garlic
• throw in all the veggies except the spinach; stir and heat up until veggies start to get a little soft
• Season veggies with some salt, pepper and Italian seasoning
• throw in the beans, pasta, stewed tomatoes, and enough water so that the pot is nearly full (not all the way!); heat on high until boiling, then turn down to medium heat
• mix vegetable bullion with warm water in a cup until dissolved, and pour into soup; boil until pasta nearly cooked
• throw in the spinach a couple minutes before the soup is done; when the pasta is cooked, the soup is done; be sure to season with more salt, pepper and Italian seasoning to taste — you know when it is seasoned right when you taste it and say, “Oh … my … God!”

Enjoy! You will love this. Serve it to friends, and tell them how you found this recipe on Zen Habits. Or do what I do, and pack it for lunch every day for a week. I never get tired of it.

Update: I forgot an ingredient – stewed tomatoes – so I added it in.