Taking advantage of the last days of cold with a soup recipe

I know I said I'd have a soup recipe yesterday, but then there was the Tuesday Tip thing...and here we are. :)  But a day late is better than never, right?

So, to use up the aforementioned beet greens, as well as lots of other veggies, I decided to make a minestrone-style soup, adapted from a recipe in my Cooking Everything Vegetarian book.  I've made it several times now, and the thing I really love about this recipe is that it's designed to be flexible.  You use a few constant things (carrot, onion, tomatoes, veggie stock), some hard vegetables of your choosing, and some soft vegetables of your choosing.  The process is the same every time, but the flavors vary based on what you use, so it's never quite the same.  Hard vegetables are things like potatoes or turnips, and soft vegetables are things like zucchini or greens.  Minestrone typically includes beans, as well, but this recipe doesn't, and I don't like them enough to go out of my way to get them.  Also, the recipe calls for celery along with carrot and onion, but since I'm really not a fan of celery, I just leave it out. 

Minestrone-style soup
Ingredients
6-8 cups veggie stock
1 biggish onion
2-3 carrots
celery if you like it (I don't know how much)
1 can stewed tomatoes, with juice
1-2 cups hard vegetables, chopped
1-2 cups soft vegetables, chopped (or more if you'd like, I prefer this soup a little thick, for some reason)
small bunch of parsley (optional, I've also used dill)
parmesan (optional)
olive oil
salt and pepper

Directions
Coarsely chop the onion and carrot and saute over medium-high heat in the olive oil until soft, about 5 minutes.  One way to save time on this step is to saute a large batch of chopped onions and carrots all at once, then freeze them in recipe-sized portions.  Salt and pepper, then toss in the hard vegetables.  I used turnips this time, since that's what I had on hand.  Cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes.  Add stock and tomatoes, bring to a boil.  If you have some old parmesan around, chop up the rinds and add them at this point - they turn soft and chewy and delicious in the soup!  Turn the heat down and allow the whole thing to simmer for about 15 minutes, until the tomatoes have broken down and the hard vegetables are pretty soft.  Add the soft vegetables and the parsley if you're using it.  This time, I used the now-infamous beet greens, some turnip greens, and some mustard greens.  I also used dill instead of the parsley.  Adjust seasonings to taste and bring the whole thing back up to a simmer.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until everything is soft -- probably another 20 minutes.  If you're cooking other things at the same time, this can simmer for a while and it only gets better.  Serve with more parm, if you'd like. 

This ends up being a lot of soup -- we got about 8 servings.  It tastes even better after it's sat overnight, though!

Tip for the recipe:  Using pre-made onion-carrot mixture is a big time saver, and is a nice way to use up some CSA carrots!  When I make big batches of the stuff, I usually just the food processor to chop up the carrots and onions to save time. Generally, I use a ration of 2-3 medium carrots to 1 large onion.