Clean Eating Vegetable Quinoa Soup

Its mid January. It's cold. It's dreary. It's time for a new recipe to add to my arsenal of weapons!

My mom made me some vegetable beef barley soup the other day. I normally don't eat ground beef because it doesn't agree with my stomach most of the time. I decided to give my moms soup a go. It was pretty yummy but it was greasy. I wanted to find an alternative to the soup that was just as yummy.

So, I came up with my own recipe. I didn't want to use meat but needed a way to get protein into the soup. In a genius move (well, I think it was genius!), I decided to add in cannelloni beans and quinoa. There's my protein!

The end result yielded 16 cups (actually more like 18 cups!) of delicious, perfect for a cold winters night, hearty soup. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Ingredients:
 

• 1 /2 medium sweet onion, diced
• 1 bag (16 oz) frozen carrots *
• 1 bag (16 oz) whole kernel sweet corn *
• 1 bag (16 oz) sweet peas *
• 1 bag (16 0z) cut green beans *
• 2, 16 oz cans of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
• 2, 14.5 oz cans of no salt added diced tomatoes
• 4 cups organic chicken stock, no salt added or low sodium
• 2 cups cooked sweet potatoes, diced (I bought mine frozen)
• 1 cup dry, uncooked quinoa

Directions:

1. Sautee diced onions in a large stock pot until they are translucent.
2. Add the remaining ingredients, except the quinoa, to the stock pot.
3. Bring the ingredients to a boil.
4. Reduce heat to medium-low and add in quinoa.
5. Cook the soup for 20 minutes, until the quinoa is cooked. 
6. Serve and enjoy!

These ingredients produced a nice thick stew-like soup. If you want your soup to be more "soupy" then add in more liquid. You can add more chicken or vegetable stock or add some water. The quinoa will soak up a lot of the liquid during the cooking process. 

You can also add in any type of veggies you want. You don't have to use all the ones that I used. I'm not a huge fan of green beans, but my son loves them so I used them. I think some zucchini would work great in this soup too. Also, you can add in any type of spices that you like. I'm not a fan of lots of spices, so I don't use any. To each their own!

I am going to freeze some of my leftovers for later this month or maybe even for next month! I love cooking enough to have some for later!

Let me know how your version turned out and what you did differently!

*when using frozen vegetables, make sure that the ONLY ingredient is the actual vegetable. If you read labels carefully, salt is added quite often! We don't need extra salt in our diets!

Serving details:
(1 serving = 1 cup)

Calories = 158

Carbs = 32

Fat = 1

Protein = 7

Calcium = 7

Sugar = 8

<3,
Kell