Don’t let the name of this soup turn you off: it’s just a moniker my mother applied to any soup she made out of what was left in our refrigerator.
This week I had leftover spaghetti squash from my earlier experiment, as well as leftover cavatappi pasta from our spaghetti night. What to do . . . ?
The nice thing about soups is they’re dead easy. I filled a large pot with water and set it to boil. I added a few heaping spoonfuls of Knorr Vegetable Stock (I use the powder instead of the liquid because I usually can’t use a whole carton before it goes bad and I don’t like to waste it).
I peeled and chopped a large parsnip and a small turnip (actually a rootabega but who’s checking?) and chucked them in the pot, together with a handful of pearl barley and about a cup of dried white beans. I also added about a cup’s worth of frozen spinach to the mix, as well as the leftover squash and pasta. There was already a significant amount of basil in the pesto that was on the squash (as well as the hazelnuts and parmesan cheese), so I didn’t add any other herbs to the mix. When we eat it we usually add salt and pepper to suit our individual tastes.
Once I got the soup boiling, stirring often, I turned it down to a simmer, medium low, for about two hours, until the beans were cooked and the rootabega was tender.
We ate it hot with tabouleh sandwiches, and it was great.
I let the rest of it cool and ladled it into yogurt containers for storage. I find the yogurt container is a good standard measure for freezing, as it contains about two full servings.
Ali Does It Herself 