Chicken Soup Full of Fresh Garden Veggies

We had a run of a few cool days and it put me in the mood for soup. I've always been a fan of soup. Anything that goes well with fresh bread slabbed with fresh butter is going to be a winner in my book. I don't know if I like the bread and butter or the soup better. Maybe that's why they go so well together- no need to choose!

To start I put some chicken in the pressure cooker. I always use bay leaves, salt, pepper, and garlic to season the chicken. The pressure cooker cooks them quickly and they always come out tender and juicy. Once the chicken was going I chopped fresh garlic cloves, purple carrots, onions and celery then tossed them in the pot with some olive oil. Remember what we learned about oil and GMOs. If not you can read about it here. I use about 2 tbsp of olive oil and cook them until the onions and garlic start to get a little brown on the edges.

You could just throw them into your broth but the browning adds so much flavor that you don't want to miss out on. The great thing about soup is that it is versatile. You don't have to be exact, throw in what ever you have. I don't think I've ever made any two pots the same and yet they are all delicious.

A little tip for quickly peeling larger quantities of garlic cloves- put your cloves in a quart jar or similar container with a lid and shake the dickens out of it. A little arm and core exercise built right into dinner prep, You didn't know you were going to get a work out too did you? But really, this is way better/easier than peeling them by hand. Yes, I just called it an exercise and said it was easier. It is. When the garlic cloves hit against the jar it release some of their oils and this helps the skin to peel off. Most off them peel of in the jar and any that are left peel off super easy. If you only have a few to peel then just lay the blade of a butcher knife flat on the garlic clove and press down firmly. This will loosen the skin and allow you to easily peel them.

Ahhhh, now the purple carrots. The contrast of the purple flesh and orange centers of these carrots are so striking. I love it. Not only beautiful but the carrots are also very sweet. You want to eat one don't you. I knew it. Just looking at the picture makes me want one too.

This is the rest of the veggies I used for the soup: Swiss chard, several kinds of carrots, basil, onions, garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, Purple Podded Pole beans, and Blue Lake bush beans. Chop them all up and throw them in the pot. I was making a big batch and used every bit of these veggies plus a bag of frozen yellow pear tomatoes from a previous year that needed to get used up. I put them in the crock pot frozen and let them cook with everything else.

One thing you might want to consider is peeling the tomatoes. I don't. I think it takes to much  time that I'd rather use doing something else. Plus there are a lot of good nutrients in the skins, I don't peel carrots either for the same reasons. I just thought I would bring it up because the skin does separate from the rest of the tomato and curl up. Some people may not like the texture. I haven't had any complaints at my house but everyone is different. I don't think anyone at my house knows any other way to compare it too.

When the chicken is done I take it out of the pressure cooker to cool so that I can pick everything off the bone. I pour all the broth into the soup. For this soup I used several chickens that I had already cut the breast and legs from and used in another meal. We raise all our own meat so no packages of chicken breast here. If I want chicken breast or thigh, drumstick, whatever, it comes from a whole chicken. I put the rest in a bag in the freezer for latter use like this, enchiladas, casserole........

The seasonings I use are, salt, pepper, garlic, oregano, celery seed, and a little thyme and a couple tbsp of butter. We like to say butter makes everything better. And it does. Now let me add here that we are all healthy and active, none of us are over weight, We eat lots and lots of fruits and veggies and no processed food. Fat is good. Fat from processed food is bad. We eat whole foods that our bodies can digest not genetically modified food that has been regurgitated from the giant food companies' processing lines. Thus we can eat butter and cream from our cows, olive and coconut oil and lots and lots of eggs and live happy healthy lives. Nothing processed, just clean food the way God intended it. So in goes the butter!

I added black beans and some small white beans as well. Beans are great in veggie soup. They fill it out. Does that make sense? I didn't add a lot of chicken compared to all the veggie so the extra protein was good. The last thing I did was add rice flour to thicken it up. Using rice flour works well for this. I mix the flour in a cup with some water then pour it into the soup and stir until it is all mixed in. We like thick soups so I almost always thicken them. We don't use corn starch- to high of risk for GMOs and we are gluten free so no wheat flour. Rice flour thickens it nicely and makes it  heartier at the same time just like whole rice would. .

I like making soup in the morning or at lunch so I don't have to worry about dinner. I can usually get everything going and in the crock pot while everyone finishes eating and the kitchen is getting cleaned up. After we're done with school I can make some bread or biscuits to go with it and if need be, a fresh batch of butter to smear on top.

Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the finished product. by the time we ate it was almost Sabbath and so no more blog pictures. Instead we sat down around the dinning table and enjoyed our yummy chicken and garden veggie soup!

What is your favorite kind of soup? Must you eat it with bread and butter like us? Leave a comment below and let me know.. Maybe we'll find a new idea to try.

Happy healthy eating!

Jaci