No Recipe Soup Recipe... ?

There is only one kind of soup that I actually use a recipe for.  That is my tomato soup.  I make a lot of soups... vegetable with various meats, bean or other legume soups... but all of those I just bring together from what I have on hand.  Today I will show you an example, mostly through pictures.  If you are not used to this kind of cooking, don't pay attention so much to the ingredients, but rather, to the method.  Then, go see what you have on hand that you can use in a lovely homemade soup!

A bunch of chopped onions:

 1/4 cup extra-virgin coconut oil, melting in the 2-gallon soup pot:

 Sauteing the onions until tender:

 Some home-canned things... left to right: chicken breast, sweet corn, chicken feet stock, chicken stock, green beans:

 2 huge cloves of garlic ~

 ~ minced and added to the pot when the onions were tender, then I sauteed it for about 30 seconds more and started adding the other ingredients.  First, I added the jars of stock, then the corn, and the green beans which I drained.

 Next came a quart of frozen, peeled, tomatoes:

 Scrubbed, diced and added a large potato:

 I had about 3 cups of leftover, cooked, pinto beans.  They went into the pot next:

 Then I thought, "I want to put some greens in there," so I went out to the hoop house and...

 picked some of that Swiss chard that I had transplanted from outside.

 Here is what I picked:

 I washed it and cut off the larger stalk pieces and chopped it all up.

 The vegetables are tender in there now, so..

 it's time to add the greens.  I did that and let it simmer for another 15 minutes:

 To that, I added 2 teaspoons sea salt, some freshly ground black pepper and some ground poultry seasoning (maybe 1/2 teaspoon.)  Next, I drained the canned chicken breast and cut it up.  I added it last, so it wouldn't overcook.

 Then I only heated it long enough to get the chicken warmed up nicely.  Here it is!  This made about 1 gallon of soup.  Half went into the fridge in a 1/2 gallon jar, and the other half I froze for later.

It tastes really nice.  Now, go look in your fridge, your pantry and your garden and see what kind of soup you can invent!  It's a wonderful skill to have.

This post is linked up to the Clever Chicks Blog Hop #4 

& Simple Lives Thursday #126