Soup from scratch: "chicken" and rice

I had some items in the fridge that were threatening mutiny, so I decided to take control of the situation and make a pot of soup--the perfect thing to have on hand while it's cold and icy outside. I had a bowl for lunch, and I'll probably have more later. I'll keep some in the fridge for tomorrow, and freeze the rest.

Jason won't be home until tomorrow evening, and has to leave again (but just for one day) as soon as he can repack, so now is my opportunity to make foods that I like but he doesn't. He doesn't dislike soup, but he refuses to eat the broth. He fishes all of the solid pieces out of the bowl and leaves the rest. It totally defeats the purpose of having soup, but don't try to tell him that--he doesn't want to hear it. (And I don't want to throw away half a can of broth every time he wants chicken and stars... but I can't reuse it because I won't eat it. Oh well.)

For my soup, I cooked a cup of rice (or maybe more, I just eyeballed it) and one quart of Pacific Natural Foods organic vegetable broth in my stock pot. When the rice was cooked through, I added diced baby carrots, chopped celery, chopped garlic, and cubed Yves veggie chicken skewers. I added about six cups of water as the liquid gradually got soaked up. Usually I would have added more vegetable stock, but I only had the one container of it. When everything was cooked through and simmering nicely, I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and basil (because I like basil), gave it a few good stirs, and voilà: homemade vegetarian chicken and rice soup.

Soup is seriously easy to make, so next time you have a good collection of soupy ingredients hanging out in the fridge that you don't quite know what to do with, chop them up and throw them in a pot with some vegetable broth. I promise it is really hard to mess that up!

Unless you cut your finger off while chopping--that would be considered messing up. In which case, I don't know what to tell you.