Soup - barley

Yes, I have a few skills. I actually made this soup from scratch. I don't really know what I'm doing and I didn't want to buy anything, since I had some medium old veggies in the fridge, perhaps about to go bad, but who knows some are irradiated, and might last forever. I have no exact clue as to what I used, I just chopped a lot of vegetables, and sauteed them until the onions carmelized, then I dumped it all into a gallon of water. Of course I added herbs like rosemary, and more onion, and salt, but really nothing too fancy. I reduced it to about half. I eyeballed all of the amounts, 4 or 5 carrots, 1 onion, 2 celery stalks, about 8 mushrooms... 

Look what you end up with. A lot of listless veggies, it's life all in the juice that's the veggie soup broth. The carrots actually were still decent, even though they cooked for a while, so I rescued them, but yes, you have a dump the rest. Really, it's old celery and onion, so it's cool.


I added the barley, which I forgot to mention was also made from scratch, that took hours of soaking and boiling. I chopped up potato, tomato, mushrooms, and added a can of beans. Yes I added beans from a can. I had some, so why not use it? I think in all this soup took nearly 6 hours + to make. The only thing I bought for it was carrot, and rest I happened to have. The tomato made a huge difference. I tried it without and after I added it, and it gave it a punch. I'm not sure if I'd do it again, but the broth has a naturally sweet flavor thanks to the carrot and onion. I've always wanted to make a soup and it turned out decent. Thanks for reading. This was my Martha Stewart moment, but we all know she can't cook.