Cabbage and Vegetable Soup

When I received my Bountiful Basket on Saturday, the first thing I thought was: what the heck am I going to do with cabbage?? Cabbage is the stinky vegetable that Ralphie had to eat on A Christmas Story. Cabbage is the icky thing in the icky coleslaw (dear God I hate coleslaw). I had to get past my 4 year old instinct (eeeewwww cabbage) and think like the adult I am: now Brenna, you have tried many new things over the past few months; cabbage won't kill you). I turned to my best Internet friend...Pinterest. Pinterest, the place where everyone is a master chef, a fitness instructor, parent extraordinaire, and Martha Stewart all rolled into one. I knew there had to be some appetizing recipe where cabbage was the main ingredient. After all, I had two heads of cabbage to use. Since I apparently should have been born during the Great Depression, I hate to waste anything. (I'm also super cheap, but lets not go there). I found a few recipes for cabbage soup, or magic diet soup as the Pinterest world refers to it. It all sounded very similar to the vegetable beef soup my momma showed me how to make, with just a few tweaks to it. Most of the recipes I saw called for cabbage, onion, and tomato to be the only vegetables. Seeing as how I had a plethora (love that word) of veggies, I decided to change it to suit my taste.

Cabbage and Vegetable Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 celery ribs, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

1 zucchini, halved and chopped

1 quart fat-free beef broth

1 quart vegetable broth

1/2 head of cabbage, cored and chopped

1 15 oz can crushed tomatoes

Sauté the onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and zucchini in the olive oil until the onion is translucent. 

Add in both quarts of broth and cabbage. Stir and bring to a boil. Add in the crushed tomatoes. Summer for up to 1 hour.

So simple. The hardest thing about this recipe was getting the dang core out of the cabbage. Seriously, how do you do that? Anyway, that's all there is to it. I added a bit of salt and pepper to taste. 

The finished product was a hearty soup, chock full of good-for-you veggies. As a lunch, I would add in some cooked quinoa, tofu, chicken, or turkey to make it more filling. It could also be made vegetarian by using 2 quarts of vegetable broth instead of the beef broth. I estimate that it makes 12 servings, with each serving being 1 WW PointsPlus.

Munch on, friends :)