Summer Vegetable Soup

I must admit to having made some of my best vegetable soup in the summer!!  Sounds a bit strange perhaps when it is in the 90's out of doors!!  The secret is a "summer" version using all of the fresh produce and leaving out the barley and rice or dried beans I would fortify the soup with in the cold months.

Today I pulled out of my freezer left over rump roast I had put back for just such an occasion as well as a bowl I store in the freezer keep adding left over veggies to for soup.  There wasn't much in my freezer bowl just a few roasted carrots.  I also pulled out some frozen stock made earlier.

I scoured my refrigerator and found green beans and corn on the cob from Sunday.  After cutting off the corn I added all I had gathered to the soup kettle.  There were fresh carrots, zucchini, celery and turnips as well as *garlic and parsley from the vegetable drawer.  There were potatoes and onions from the bin.  In the deep freezer I found packaged frozen peas and Lima beans to add.  I pulled a dried hot pepper from storage and stirred all of the magic together with about 1 t. of salt. 1/2 t black pepper, 1 t. sugar and 2 quarts of tomatoes I had canned from last summer.   After tasting and stirring  the soup I added a quart of water and 6 beef bouillon cubes to fortify the broth.

Needless to say I didn't really measure a thing.  I just used what I had and what looked and tasted right.
We have a healthy, low fat, inexpensive and tasty kettle of soup. My granddaughter Emily will be happy it is her favorite soup and I promised to give them some too!

*Many times a recipe calls for a lot of garlic so I drop a bunch of cloves into boiling water and peel a good supply.  What I don't use that day I store in a small glass jar.  I do not refrigerate fresh garlic.