Tortilliaish soup.

Yeah, tortillaish isn't a word, but whatever.

I love soup. That being said I HATE vegetables. But I don't have a death wish so I eat them as often as I can stand. Being Italian I also like my veggies mushy. Unlike the crazy French who like them tender crisp, us Italians cook our veggies until they are almost mashable. Nothing I can stand worse than crisp tender green beans. Ew.

Okay, so soup gives me a great outlet to use lots of veggies and not dwell on the fact that I'm eating vegetables.

I call this soup tortillaish because it is based on Chicken Tortilla soup, but packed with veggies. I've also used firm tofu chunks and vegetable stock in place of the chicken and chicken stock before and gotten really good results!

Start with good chicken stock. I make my own as often as possible, but sometimes don't have any. I always have a couple of boxes of chicken stock in the cupboard. When you are using homemade chicken stock you ALWAYS want to make sure that it boils for a few minutes to kill off any germies that might have wormed their way in there.

I typically use about 12 cups of stock for this soup because it has lots of stuff in it.



Look at that stocky goodness. Isn't it beautiful. Ooooooooo

Okay so to the stock I add 1 large or 2 small onions,
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 chicken breasts
1 bay leaf
1 bag frozen corn
2 cups salsa
3 T. cumin (I adore cumin)
2 T. chili powder
2 zucchini chunked
2 yellow squash chunked
1 T. oregano, dried is fine here
Salt and pepper to taste
whatever other veggies I have that need to be cooked

simmer for about an hour until the veggies are really tender. Serve with shredded Monterrey jack cheese, sour cream, or avocado chunks (my personal fav) Traditionally it is served with broken up tortilla chips, but I don't like this because it is hard to find good tortilla chips that aren't fried in lard, which we don't eat because it is a pork product, and I don't like the flavor of tortilla chips fried in canola or corn oil.

ETA: I just threw some a can of black beans in there cause it was looking a little thin. OH MY GOODNESS, great addition! I don't like Pinto beans, but perhaps those could work too? I wouldn't go with white beans, to creamy in texture and flavor