Vegetable Soup with Whole Wheat Pasta, Massaged Kale Salad, English Muffin (No Added Fat)

We are having a snowy weekend with cold weather, so soup is in order. I don't usually make a straight up vegetable soup, typically including beans. I decided to make a simple vegetable soup in my Instant Pot pressure cooker. It has a "Soup" button that cooks for 30m; I was going to cook just for 20m to have firmer vegetables, but my daughter was helping me cook and wanted softer vegetables, so we stuck with 30m. I've been meaning to make a pasta e fagioli bean and pasta soup sometime; this wasn't a bean soup, but I still used whole wheat pasta in this non-fagioli. Here is what I did.


Ingredients

• 3 small Yukon Gold potatoes cut into large 1" or so chunks
• 1 small sweet potato also cut into large 1" or so chunks
• 2 carrots cut into 1/2" wide discs
• 4 cloves garlic, finely (1/8") diced
• 1/2 cup onion cut into approx. 1 1/4" x 1/4" half moons
• 1 cup whole wheat pasta
• 2 vegan bouillon cubes (I wanted a strong broth, so used two cubes)
• 1/2 t dried oregano
• (optional) 2t nutritional yeast
• 3/4 t salt
• (optional) 1/4 t lemon pepper
• About 6 cups (more or less depending on how thick you want the soup to be) water

Process

1. I put all of the ingredients into my Instant Pot and pushed (well, my daughter pushed!) the "Soup" button for 30m of cooking.
2. After the cooking was done, I waited a few minutes and gently released pressure, then served.

I also served a massaged kale salad and English muffin halves with tomato, pickle, and olive.

By the way, yesterday my daughter asked about fondue and I had the idea to make a simple dessert a bit like fondue. I put some frozen strawberries and mango into my small Saladmaster stock pot and cooked waterlessly (cooked on medium heat, covered, till vapor release started flapping, then reduced heat to stop the flapping noise and cooked for about 15-20m). Toward the end, I quickly opened the cover and put in a few vegan chocolate chips. It was so good that we did the same thing tonight. It tastes like a nice warm fruit compote - my family didn't even want chocolate with the fruit today. This would be really good with my vegan yogurt!

Results

Dinner was great! We all loved it. It's amazing how tasty pressure cooking makes soups.

Ideas for the future

I should definitely make a pasta e fagioli sometime. The soup today was really good; I had considered adding cauliflower or broccoli, but am glad that I didn't. A little red wine would have been good, and even more garlic could have been nice.