Mistakenly Yummy Vegetable Soup

What's this you ask?  A mistake.  A yummy mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

I consider myself a foodie and I'm pretty adventurous in the kitchen.  But I am by no means experienced.  I don't understand the dynamics that make a cake rise or why you should or shouldn't let something boil for a certain amount of time.

One of my favorite things to make is soup.  And I swear I do something wrong every single time.

I was excited this week to try a new version of vegetable soup.  With my trusty friend Giada (yes again) as my guide I set out to make what she calls Italian Vegetable Soup and I just call yummy!

Here's what you  need

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 leeks, chopped

2 garlic cloves

6 small zucchini

2 cans artichoke hearts

salt & pepper

10 cups vegetable broth

1 T chopped fresh thyme

1 and 1/2 cups pasta

Here's what you do...

Chop your leeks and your zucchini.  If you haven't worked with leeks before they are kind of like an onion.  They are very tasty and flavorful and I prefer them to onions in many dishes.  You'll only use the light green and white part.  I sliced and quartered my veggies.

Saute your leeks and garlic in a pan until translucent.  That means you can see through them.  Stir in your zucchini and artichokes.  Make sure you use artichokes packed in water.  You'll want to drain them as well.  I bought whole hearts so I quartered these as well.

Season with salt and pepper and saute until the zucchini is tender.  This should take about 10 minutes.  Stir in the thyme and add the vegetable broth.  I actually used 8 cups of broth and 2 cups of water and it was fine!

Simmer on low for about 20 minutes.  Then add your pasta.

And here is where I went wrong.

A few weeks ago I found alphabet pasta.  We are obsessed with a capitol O at our house with letters so I thought this would be a fun way to incorporate learning into a meal and potentially get the Little Guy to try something new.

Have you see that alphabet pasta?  It is SO small!  There wasn't enough in the box for me to make the recipe twice so I added all of it.  Plus it was so small!  Oops!!  When I went back to check on the soup there was no soup.  Just mountains and mountains of flavorful alphabet pasta with leeks, zucchini and artichoke hearts!!

So, the moral of the story is...try this recipe and even fiddle around with broth and thyme and extra leeks but do not add that much extra pasta!!!

So, 1 and 1/2 cups of pasta is what you should add.  Giada suggests egg noodles or if you are particularly awesome fresh fettucine.  Because I certainly have some of that in my house.  Ha!

This soup is seriously good.  I know I say that about everything I put on here but what can I say!?  I love yummy food.  I will definitely make it again and will follow the pasta amount correctly.  Even with all the extra is still tastes fabulous, it just isn't as elegant looking.

The original recipe (in her cookbook) also suggests mixing butter, parmesean cheese and fresh thyme as a topping.  We skipped that because A. this recipe is so tasty on it's own and B. I am trying to cook healthy means so no extraneous butter!!

This is a fabulous soup if you are trying to eat healthier and especially if you LOVE artichokes like I do!!  I hope you enjoy!!