I had a very good vegetable soup a few days ago and I decided to make my own. So yesterday I went to Pathmark and brought a bag of baby carrots,green onions,a leek,two cloves of garlic,one white onion,celery,a jalapeno pepper,a can of corn, fresh green beans, and some elbow macaroni(whole wheat).  So about 9 this morning I got to work. I chopped up all the vegetable and threw them in grandma's old crock pot I had brought over from my apartment. The only issues I had was when I was cutting up the leek since they are in the onion family they make you cry like onions espeically when you get closer to the core of the thing, and be sure to seperate the sections and wash it because dirt can gather. I had crushed the garlic with a garlic presser(a tip: remove the very center part of the garlic,it'll have a slight greenish tint. This is actually the baby garlic "plant". It'll give the garlic a slightly bitter taste if you don't remove it). Then I had added a jalapeno pepper for some heat. You don't have to put the pepper in there if you don't want. What I did was  slice the pepper in half and remove the seeds but left the ribs on(most of the heat is in the ribs and the seeds you can adjust the heat in this way to suit your taste). I didn't chop up the pepper into tiny pieces because I want to remove it later.

I wanted to add more veggies but the crock pot can only hold so much. So after all the cutting and the chopping, I put serveral cups of water just until the water was a 3 inches from the rim. After that I added five large dashes of salt, and some soy sauce. Then I turned the pot on to high for the first hour and a half just to start things up and then put the pot on low. Meanwhile I cooked the macaroni seperately;I cooked it til it was almost done,and afterwards I put the macaroni a side. I did this because in a crock pot vegetables cook much more slowly then anything esle you put in there(but meats cook faster which is why if you are cooking meats and veggies together,cut the veggies into small peices). About 2 hours before the veggies are done I'll add the macaroni.

And that's it. By my guess the veggie soup should be done by 7 o'clock tonight. Also resist the urge to open and stir the crock pot. Don't worry the veggies are not going to burn or you won't worry about the water boiling out if you put the crockpot on the low setting. I'm going to go out today and by the time I get back my soup will be done. Another thing is that your whole house will smell like onions,and garlic,and leeks all in one neat package,and because I added the jalapeno eyes will water slightly for the first 3 hours.(So be sure you'll going out somewhere for a while) Now with the newer crock pots you can control the  cooking time from 4 up to 10 hours. But I have the old (1960's?) model with only 2 settings, low and high. If you don't have a crock pot you can still use a regular pot(the larger the better since you can add more veggies). If you want to be more creative, you can use the veggies for a meat  stew instead of a soup. Well anyway, that's it for now. I'll take a picture of the finished product to show how my masterpeice turnt out. Later people!

"Just because you're a man doesn't excuse you from cookin'. All men have to cook, you can't buy take out all the time,and a woman respects a man who know how to cook."

                                                                                                                                                                   -Grandma

Tigoness