Hearty Vegetable & Farro Soup

I've been playing around a lot with vegetable and grain based soups this winter trying to get my family, or at least my husband, to join me in eating more plant based meals. I figure soups were an easy way to do this. I thought this soup was pretty delicious but I'll be honest and say that my husband's first words were "where's the meat?" 

Oh well, I enjoyed it and it made for some yummy lunches for the week!

I love a quick and easy crock pot soup on a cold winter's night! And this one was super easy. I used what fresh veggies I happened to have on hand, added in some seasoning and then threw in some farro at the very end to help make it a more hearty meal. Without the farro I think this would make a lovely appetizer soup!

Ingredients:

1 onion; diced

2 zucchini; cut into bite sized pieces

2 summer squash; cut into bite sized pieces

1 carrot; peeled and sliced

2 tomatoes; diced

1 cup mushrooms; sliced

1/2 cup fresh basil 

3 cloves garlic; minced

6 cups broth (of your choice-)

1 tsp. dried oregano

1 tsp. paprika

2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

salt and pepper to taste

1 cup of farro; only added in 30 minutes or so before serving (quinoa or brown rice would work well too!)

I did use a sprinkling of white cheddar cheese over each bowl when serving... after the meat comment. That seemed to appease him!

To assemble:

I chopped up all the vegetables and added it into my crock pot along with the seasonings, liquids-- in fact the only things I didn't add were the farro and the option cheese. Then I set the crock pot on low and let it simmer all day. 

30 minutes or so before we were going to be eating I added in the farro and gave the soup a good stir. 

I stirred it again before serving hoping to evenly distribute the farro throughout; though I really did not do a good job an should have used a large spoon or spatula to scrape the corners/edges of the crock pot. The ladle didn't do a good job as I later found out when portioning up the leftovers into single serving containers. 

It was a hearty soup that I did serve with some homemade rolls. I thought it was super yummy and best of all it's something like 1 point on WW so I didn't feel bad eating more than one helping. 

I didn't do a great job stirring up the farro from the bottom of the crock pot before serving; you can better see the soup in this photo I took the next day while eating delicious leftovers for lunch. 

Of course this serving had more farro than I would have liked but you can see how if I had evenly distributed it better it would have been a nice mix of whole grain and vegetables. 

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