Veggie Soup with Noodles

My mom often made soup for dinner. And what ever soup she made, she always added noodles! And sometimes beans. So, although this isn't a traditional Veggie soup, it is to me. It has no meat, and Veggie stock is used.

I love shopping at Trader Joe's - so most if not all of my veggies come from there - they are organic and I trust their produce. I also used their Vegetable Stock for this recipe - it's sodium free and gluten free.

Serves 7-8 (so freeze your left overs or eat throughout the week!)
Olive oil (for your pan)
2 small yellow onions or one large, finely chopped
2 tbsp of minced garlic (you'll find I over do it on my garlic - I LOVE garlic)
2 tbsp finely chopped rosemary
1 1/2-2 cups of finely chopped carrots
2 yellow squash - finely chopped
2 14oz cans of stewed whole tomatoes with juices (you can cop them or not - I didn't)
1 15 oz can of white beans, drained (draining reduces your sodium)
about 2 cups of Whole wheat organic Rotelle pasta (I eye balled this - depends how much noodles you want in your soup)
4 cups of Vegetable stock
2 cups of water
Fine Sea Salt and Ground black pepper to taste

** You can add pretty much any veggie to this - Zucchini, Celery...I happen to hate cooked celery, and haven't warmed up to zucchini yet.

1. Heat your olive oil in a large pan - add onions and cook on low until soft. Like 5-6 minutes. Then add garlic, rosemary and carrots. Cook on low stirring occasionally - until soft - like 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

2. In a large stock pot, add your tomatoes and squash on medium high heat. Immediately follow with your carrot mixture. Cook for 5 minutes. Add your veggie stock and water, your Rotelle noodles and beans. Bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Taste it! Season with more salt ( I needed to, as much as I wanted to limit the salt in this recipe, it was hard to sacrifice the taste) and garlic powder to your desired taste. If you added too many noodles and have sucked too much water out of your soup, add more water. It really depends how thick you like your soup.

I tend to make my soups on the thick side - it makes it easier for Aodhan to eat it. And he did eat this soup! He loves noodles so as soon as he saw the noodles it created enough of a diversion for him to eat the soup with the veggies!