We weren’t sure what to call the soup we made because we made it up as we went along and used mostly left overs.  Mom had a party two nights ago and had a big vegetable platter that nobody ate. So we had left -over squash, carrots, broccoli and tomatoes, cucumbers (we only used the squash and the carrots in the soup; we made a Greek salad with the left-over tomatoes & cucumbers).  Then we had two pints of chicken broth frozen that we had made a couple of months ago and needed to use up.  We also had 1/2 head of kale and a chunk of hard parmesan cheese.  Finally we had 1/4 box fusilli that wasn’t enough for a full meal.  The only “new” thing we added were cannellini beans. Here’s a little trick for making any type of soup: put the ingredient that takes the longest to cook in first.

Here are the steps we took:

1. First chop up any of the vegetables you are going to use (this is called “mis en place”):

2. Thaw the chicken broth and add the vegetables that need to cook the longest (carrots here)

3. When the carrots are soft, and kale, pasta and chunk of cheese.

4. Add squash (it doesn’t take long too cook)

5. Simmer and right before you are ready to serve: Add the beans (they go last because they need the least time to cook).

For the salad: the same principles apply.  Chop everything you are going to put up in the salad first….then combine.  We used the cucumbers and tomatoes from the veggie platter and then olives and feta cheese that were left from a Middle-Eastern platter that mom had had at the party.  We felt super good about not wasting the food.