During these cold winter months, nothing tastes better than a piping hot bowl of vegetable soup.  On this particular Sunday night dinner at my parents house, my ma and I planned on making a vegetable soup but didn’t have any direction with it.  I’m going to give you the order in which we made our soup and if you have any helpful ideas you’d like to add, drop me a note at the bottom of the post!

The vegetables we used are as follows:

• 1/2 a napa cabbage cut into chunks
• 3 large carrots cut into discs
• 3 celery stalks chopped
• 1 medium yellow onion diced
• 1 butternut squash cut into little squares
• two 15 oz cans of organic diced tomatoes
• 1 can of black beans (drained and rinsed)
• the corn cut off of 1 cob
• frozen peas (we just kind of poured them in)
• diced fresh green beans
• 1 large zucchini sliced and then cut into quarters

We emptied two boxes of organic low sodium vegetable broth and some water into a large pot (water amount depends on how much broth vs veggies you want–always use a least 1 pint’s worth to dilute the broth a little).  We added the carrots, onions, squash and cabbage and brought it to a boil.  We seasoned with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and cayenne pepper, covered the pot and let it cook for about 15-25 minutes until the squash was soft but still a little firm to the bite.  We then added the rest of the ingredients, seasoned again and turned the heat down to medium high and cooked for another 15 minutes (still having it covered).  Consider the squash to be your taste tester to make sure everything is cooked through.  We ladled our soup into the serving bowls and let them cool for about 5 minutes before setting them down at the table.  Cheese eaters should freshly grate some parmesan cheese on top of their soup after the 5 minute cool down.