Minestrone Soup for a Weeknight Dinner

This was my first ever attempt to making minestrone soup. I had plans to make it for such a long time but always found recipes that required 3-4 hour cooking time. Well, no more, this one is a 30 minute cooking time + about 10 minutes of veggie chopping.

I modified this Minestrone Recipe from Ellie Krieger mostly because I didn't have all of the things for the recipes. No matter, the soup came out absolutely delicious.

3 tbs EV olive oil
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/3 pound green beans, trimmed and cute to bite-sized length
1 medium-ish zucchini
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt and freshly ground pepper
14-oz can of tomato sauce (I used TJ's organic tomato sauce, its all I had. I am sure I could have also just used a dab of tomato paste but the sauce made the soup a little more hardy.)
1.5 cups halved cherry tomatoes
6-8 cups home made chicken stock
14 oz of kidney beans
1 cup shell pasta
grated parmesan cheese (or other harder cheese)
chopped basil

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds. Add the celery and carrots and cook until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in the green beans, zucchini, dried oregano and thyme, ~1/2 tsp salt and freshly ground pepper. Cook for about 3 minutes.

Add the tomato sauce, the stock, and toss in the halved cherry tomatoes. Bring to boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the kidney beans and pasta and cook for another 10 minutes.

Ladle into bowls hot and top with grated hard cheese like parmesan and chopped basil.

Note: Eating Organic IS NOT Expensive

All of the things listed above were organic. Since organic beans are about $2/can (and not to mention the sodium and processing and canning), I actually go to the "bulk" section of the store and buy a pound of dry organic beans which costs about $2-3. I cook them all at one time, use what I need at that point and store the rest in 14-oz amounts per ziplock bag in the freezer. You get quite a few "cans" of beans this way.