Spicy Veggie Soup

You're lookin' at an accidental surprise dish, here. You see, Mr. Wonderful is doing a cleanse diet thingy and I just couldn't make him another green smoothie or salad. It's just SO COLD OUT! We recently started getting organic produce from a weekly co-op and it was heavy on the bell peppers this time. So, naturally, we've been having lots of veggie omelets and fajitas. But I STILL wasn't using them fast enough. So, this pot of yumminess was a little on the spicy side with 1 1/2 large red bell peppers and 1 or 2 large yellow peppers. But it was surprisingly good! Especially when you throw in every other vegetable you have lyin' 'round, "stone soup" style! (One of my favorite childhood stories, by the way.) I would have liked to have put cabbage in here as well, but I didn't have any to speak of and a random experiment soup such as this didn't warrant a whole trip to the store. And experiment it was, and not a planned meal to blog, which is why I don't have an ingredient shot, but I did take this picture (below) of everything before it cooked down, because it was just so colorful and purty.

What you need:

2 onions, sliced
1 1/2 large red bell peppers, diced
2 large yellow bell peppers, diced
1 medium leek, sliced
10-12 baby carrots or maybe about 3 large carrots, sliced
1 can of diced tomatoes, with juice
2 kale leaves, chopped
2 collard greens leaves, chopped
2 celery stalks, sliced
3-4 T. dry onion soup mix (watch out for MSG. Bad news. Every brand at every store that I've tried has it. Even the ever-popular Lipton. The only one that I've found that doesn't is in the Winco bulk section. So check labels. It won't flat out say, MSG, by the way. It will say monosodium glutamate. Sneaky little devils.)
5 C. water


How you make it:

Toss everything in a pot or dutch oven. Bring to boil and cover and simmer for 30 minutes or more. Stirring occasionally. (I probably let this cook down for a couple hours because I was busy doing other slave, er, I mean, mom duties.)

Ladle out 1/2 to 2/3 of the soup into a blender and purée. Pour back into the pot and mix together.

Of course, if you don't like things spicy, there's no reason this has to be. Go very easy on the peppers, and you're good to go!

Now I think there are MANY variation possibilities with this one. You could add some lime juice and cilantro, any sort of beans, chicken, shrimp, you name it. But if you want to stay cheap and all veggie, this "stone soup" was a nice surprise success.