 Hi everyone the weather is changing so I thought it would be great to make a vegetable soup. I've still got vegetables and herbs growing in my garden so I thought I would grow those in. So this thing is chock full of good stuff, I've got greens going into this, we've got some beans, I've got garlic, onions, carrots, I mean just a whole boatload of nutrition going into this. Now how do we make this taste amazing? Well I'm going to show you two things that you really must do in order to bring out the best flavor and you're going to love this soup. I'm Rockin' Robin and I'm going to show you how to make it right after this. Time for a chef joke. Alright so what did the yam say to the pumpkin? I am what I am. If you like my chef jokes hang around because I got one more for you a little bit later. Did I mention how simple and easy this recipe is you're going to love it? There is a lot of chopping involved but it is so so so easy to do. Now we're going to start with tip number one alright and we're going to take some yellow onion and we're going to dice it up. I'm going to use the super fine dice just because I like small pieces of onion. We're going to also add some sliced celery and carrot and we're going to chop all these things up and then I'm going to use some bell pepper as well. I have one bell pepper out of my garden, I want to use it up, it's nice and fresh and we're going to saute this in some olive oil for about five to maybe even up to ten minutes. I'm going to add a little garlic towards the end and this is going to add the most flavor into your soup and you're going to love it. Now here's our mirepoix after almost ten minutes, it's about nine minutes right now and you can see that the onions have definitely softened up and a little bit on the celery. Carrots are still a little crisp yet, that's okay. Now it's time to add our garlic so I'm going to add some fresh garlic to this. Put it in my press here and just squeeze it out and slice it in and then we want to stir this in and just saute for one minute more and that's going to just, you can start to smell that garlic, it gets very aromatic, it smells wonderful and we want that to just mellow out and then I'm going to pour this into my stock pot. So we're going to be adding some fresh organic chard to this recipe. This one here I've had in the fridge for several days, it's getting a little willty but that's okay, this is perfect for this application. I'm just going to trim it up and I like to take some of the big stems out so that's what I'm going to do. I just don't care for it personally, you can leave it in if you like. I just want the leaves so I'm just going to cut the stem out of it. You can save the stems and put them in your smoothie or anything else you want to, you know maybe you're doing a stir fry and you want to throw that in, that's a great thing to do with it. So basically I'll just take it all and I just scrunch it all up and chop it up. You don't want the pieces to be too big, you want to be able to fit it on your spoon when you're eating it, that looks pretty good. Now for tip number two, alright, we're going to be using some fresh herbs in this and you want to use fresh as opposed to dried, right, the flavor is just different and it's so much fresher and it just tastes so much better that the flavors are almost a little more subtle so that's why I like it. Use fresh herbs and organic if you can get it. So what we have here is some fresh Italian flat leaf parsley. I've got some fresh basil out of my garden and I've got some fresh thyme and sage out of my garden as well. So we're going to chop all that up and then place it into our stock pot. So stack your basil leaves and then give them a nice roll and then we'll chop them up. Now for the time, peel off the little leaves and then chop those up. Now we'll treat the sage the same way as we did the basil. Stack the leaves, roll them and then slice them and chop them. Now that we have all of our herbs in the pot, I just wanted to mention one little tip for you. This is a bonus tip. To keep your parsley and say cilantro fresh, I like to take a mason jar, put a few ounces of water in there, cut off the end of the stem there, put it in, cover it with a little plastic bag, put it in the fridge and it'll keep like two weeks. So next thing that goes in the pot, we're going to add some pesto. This is store-bought pesto sauce that you can buy, pick out your favorite. Ours is armenino, so I'm just going to add a little bit of that to our soup. And I'm also going to add some great northern beans that are going to be rinsed and drained. I'm just going to add it right in for a little bit of protein. So now we're going to add our chicken broth and we're going to add as much as we want to make it thin. So it's going to be at least four cups. Now give that a stir. We're not going to add any salt just yet because the pesto sauce, mine in particular, has a fair amount of salt in it. And so I want to just see how it tastes with all the ingredients in there before I start adding salt. I'm going to add a little more chicken broth because I still have to add the charred to this and it's going to, you know, take up a little bit of that liquid. So I'm going to add a little bit more, probably another cup. We're going to put this on the stove and I'm going to bring it to a boil and then I'm going to lower it and simmer it for about 10 minutes and then we'll add the charred. I'm going to cover this because I don't want, as it's simmering, to lose too much of the liquid. All right, chef joke time. Why did the tomato get embarrassed? Because it saw a chickpea. All right, so here's our soup. It's been simmering now for 10 minutes. You can see we got a nice soft boil. Keep the lid on. Keep the moisture in so it doesn't evaporate. Okay, so we're ready now to place the charred in there. You put in as much as you want, obviously. Give it a stir and we'll let this go another, you know, three or four, just a couple minutes. We'll just do a couple minutes then I'm going to taste it for salt. But this soup is so wonderful in terms of flavor and nutrition and feel free to add any other vegetables. Asparagus would be great. Chopped up some zucchini, you know, anything you like or just pick your favorites. Here's our beautiful soup. It's hot. Let me tell you and it looks amazing. Vibrant colors. All right, so let's see if we can serve this up without dripping too much. Look at that. Beautiful colors. You've got the yellow from the bell pepper and the carrots are orange and bright. And of course, a lot of greenery going on in there and it should be good. We got our beans and like I said, so customizable. All right, let's get some of this and see how we like it. You know, this soup would actually be, in my opinion, would be great at Thanksgiving to serve. The colors are definitely fall colors and the nutrition is there and the flavor. Well, let's see. That is so fresh and vibrant. The flavors are excellent. Definitely take my tips and use them. You will love this soup if you do, I promise. If you'd like to try another fall recipe, go ahead and check out my pumpkin French toast. It's really delicious. I'm going to leave a link for you right over there. Go ahead and click that right away and check it out. You're going to love it. It's just perfect for fall. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe, hit that like button and leave me a comment. We'll see you next time.