Minestrone Soup

2,400+ views, wow, happy Soup Wednesday! I know that it's Tuesday, but I have the cutest recipe planned for Halloween tomorrow so we decided to post Becky's soup recipe today. Aren't you glad we didn't keep you waiting? 

For this week's soup, I decided to try minestrone. I based this recipe off of the one I found here.

Other Soup Wednesday recipes:
Week 3
Week 2
Week 1

Ingredients:

-2 tablespoons olive oil
-1/4 cup chopped zucchini
-1/4 cup green beans
-1/4 cup minced celery (about 1/2 stalk)
-2 2 cloves garlic

-4 cups vegetable broth
-1 (15 ounce)can red kidney beans, drained
-1 (15 ounce)can small white beans or great northern beans, drained
-1 /2 (14 ounce) can diced tomatoes
-1/2 cup carrots, shredded
-2 tablespoons parsley
-1 teaspoons salt
-1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
-1/2 teaspoon dried basil
-1/4 Italian seasoning
-1 1/2 cups hot water
-1/2 can spinach
-1 cup ditalini pasta

-Parmesan cheese

The original recipe called for fresh vegetables, but I used canned for the zucchini (I used zucchini in tomato sauce), green beans, and spinach (the original called for 3 cups of fresh spinach, the amount I used was plenty). It probably would be better with fresh vegetables, but since there were so many ingredients, it was easier canned, and it turned out fine. Also, the original called for only 1/3 cup of pasta, but I really like pasta in my soup so I added a lot more, and minestrone generally has onion but I left that out.

Heat the olive oil, and saute the garlic, zucchini, green beans, and celery.

Add the rest of the ingredients, other than the spinach and pasta.
Bring to a boil, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add spinach and pasta, and cook for another 20 minutes.

I added some Parmesan cheese on top.

I really like minestrone soup, and this was a good version. It made a lot, 8 servings, but it is easy to freeze and microwave later for an easy meal.