Butternut Squash and Veggie Soup

On a cold and dreary day, nothing beats a good soup. This soup is gluten free, soy free, vegan, fat free, and legal for the specific carbohydrate diet. It is also tasty and easy to make. This recipe is written for use with a medium crock pot, but you could also cook it stove top.

Butternut Squash and Veggie Soup

Ta-da! Beautiful healthy soup.

Ingredients:

• 1 block of frozen puréed butternut squash
• 2 cups of frozen cubed butternut squash
• 4 cups of frozen veggie mix of yellow beans, green beans, and baby carrots
• 2 cups ginger tea
• Water 
• Half a bag of raw baby spinach 
• 1 tsp powdered ginger
• salt and pepper

Cooking Instructions:

1. Place the block of frozen butternut purée in the bottom of the crock pot, and turn the crock pot on to high.
2. Pour the 2 cups of hot ginger tea over the frozen butternut purée.
3. Rinse and add the frozen cubed butternut squash and frozen veggie mix. 
4. Add water until the crock pot is nearly full, but leave about an inch of space from the top.
5. Sprinkle on and mix in the powdered ginger, salt, and pepper.
6. Cover the crockpot and cook on high until everything is hot. (I usually toss everything in there in the morning to be ready for dinner in the early evening, but it can be cooked in less time.)
7. Half an hour before you want to eat, toss in the baby spinach and turn the heat down to low.
8. After that half hour the soup is ready to enjoy!

If you want to the soup to be even heartier, you can add rice and lentils to the crockpot or cook pasta separately to add at the end. In theory if you put the pasta in at the right point it can be cooked in the crockpot too, but I never seem to pull that off when I try. I find the texture of the pasta, especially using occasionally fickle gluten free pastas, is better when I cook it separately.