"Shit Soup" (Minestrone-Inspired Soup)

This week has been insanely hot so I took advantage of some pool and beach time. On Wednesday, I went to my Grandmother's apartment complex and sat at the pool with her for a few hours in the afternoon. It was an afternoon well spent-I sat in the kiddie section of the pool reading my book, continued working on my CEU courses, and talked about recipes and cooking with some of the ladies at the pool. One of the ladies, Millie, began telling me of me "shit recipes" -a Yiddish phrase that means a recipe where you sort of just throw anything and everything you have into it. 

That's exactly what I did with this soup. I loosely based it off of a minestrone soup recipe I found a while ago (sorry-for the life of me, I can't remember where it came from) 

Like I said, this is a "shit recipe" so there are no exact measurements or directions. 

I started off with the following ingredients: 

olive oil

2 zucchini

2 yellow squash

10 Vegetable and 10 chicken bouillon cubes

garlic powder

5 carrots

5 small russet potatoes

4 stalks of celery

2 cans (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes and their juices

1 small can of butter beans

1 large can of cannelloni beans

salt and pepper

16 cups of water

About half a cup of quinoa

Directions: 

1. Chop carrots and celery. Saute vegetables for a few minutes in olive oil in a large dutch oven

2. Once the vegetables have softened a bit, add bullion cubes and water. Increase heat to medium-high.

3. Chop potatoes, zucchini, and squash into small, bite-sized pieces and add to soup. Add quinoa and bring to a boil. 

4. Add cans of diced tomatoes and their juices. 

5. Add zucchini and squash. 

6. Drain and rinse beans and add to soup. 

7. Continue cooking soup over medium-low heat until vegetables and potatoes are tender and quinoa is cooked thoroughly. Add seasonings as you find appropriate. This time, I just added some pepper. The bullion cubes tend to be pretty salty so it wasn't necessary to add any additional salt. 

Serve with a piece of toasted french bread. 

This particular version of soup yielded a good amount so I was able to pack some into Tupperware containers and freeze for another time. I've made many variations of this type of soup with different combinations of vegetables (i.e corn, beans, etc.), beans (i.e. kidney, fava, lima, etc.) and starches (i.e. rice, pasta, etc.) and it always comes out tasting great. 

Enjoy!!!

Question for you:

Do you have any recipe swapping stories?