Mushroom barley soup

Today the “arctic blast” hit Texas and it is FREEEEZING! So of course we turned to some home style soup. I had not had mushroom barley soup before so I took a stab at it. This is great for people who don’t know many techniques or have much time. Here is what you will need:

1 yellow onion finely chopped

2-3 cloves of garlic minced

2 carrots cut into pieces

2 celery stalks cut into small pieces

1 box of mushrooms sliced

2 boxes of low sodium vegetable stock

1 cup of barley

2 bay leaves

fresh thyme

To start, you can cook the barley the night before. Boil 4 cups of water and add 1 cup of barley covered at a low/medium simmer for 35-40 minutes until the barley is soft. I like the barley to be aldente so 35 minutes was enough for me. Drain the barley and set aside.

In a pot, heat up some olive oil and saute the onion and garlic until the onion just starts to become translucent. Add the carrot and celery and stir until the carrots start to soften – about 3-5 minutes.  Add the mushrooms and cook until they start to soften. Add the veggie stock and bring it back to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. Add in the barley and cook for another 5 minutes and serve!

I promise to take better photos next time....

Serving size was 1 1/2 cups in our Le Creuset soup bowls = 5 total servings for this entire recipe – great for freezing leftovers!

Welcome brave souls

The husband and I love to cook and we are getting tired of friends asking us how we made stuff constantly – so I started a blog! He and I work about 9-10 hours a day so during the week we don’t have much time to slave away at the stove.

We are also starting a new lifestyle of eating healthy, trying to lose weight so most of these recipes will be health-ful so sorry if you are looking for a kick-ass fried chicken and waffles or sausage gravy recipe.

I am married to a grad student so our budgets are….tight to say the least so most of these recipes will be affordable too!

With all of these elements combined it is hard to balance everything so the organization will be as follows: during the work week we will focus on affordable, time saving and healthy dinners and during the weekend we will put up “project dinners” where we will get more creative and can really try new and fun stuff!

Deal?