Slow cooked rice and veggie soup

The rice in this soup is slowly cooked for 3 hours so make sure you plan ahead.  You can cook this in the morning and reheat it when you need it.  Or make it the night before, the flavor is even better when it has a chance to sit!!  This soup is the best and is going to become a regular in my house.

Slow cooked rice and veggie soup

serves 2-4

8 cups water or other stock or liquid (*see note)

1 1/4 cup brown rice

1/2 onion, sliced

1 cup broccoli florets with stems sliced in half

2 carrots, cut in rounds

1 tomato, roughly chopped

1 leaf curly kale, ripped in pieces

1 cup daikon, roughly chopped in bite size cubes

1/2 cup chopped celery

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp black pepper

Bring 8 cups water to a boil in a large soup pan.  (*You can use veggie stock or anything really in place of water.  I save all the leftover water from cooking pasta or steaming vegetables and I use it for the base of soups!  The leftover water will keep for a day or 2 in a closed jar in the fridge, or you can freeze it in ice cube trays in the freezer.  So save these and make a big, hearty soup! :)  

Add 1 cup brown rice and allow to boil for 30 minutes, keeping an eye on it, making sure it doesn't boil over.  Turn the heat down to low, cover pot and let simmer for 2 hours.  Return heat to medium and allow to boil for another 30 minutes.  

Add all veggies and other ingredients and let boil 5 minutes.  Turn heat to low and let sit covered for 5-10 minutes.  You can turn the heat off after this and let it sit covered for a couple hours to let the flavors mingle, or you can serve it as-is.  Either way, it's delicious :)

To make life easier, when you are chopping all the veggies, you can chop extra and store them in a bag in the fridge (3-5 days depending on freshness) or freezer so when you want soup, everything is ready. Just grab handfuls and pop in some boiling water for a quick meal.

I also started a scrap bag in my freezer!  I try not to waste anything and I reuse or give away as much as possible so it started to bug me that my garbage was always full of nothing but veggie scraps.  I live in an apartment so I don't compost and am not left with many other options.  Instead of feeling bad and guilty every day for my waste, I decided to do something about it.  Everything I would normally throw away--potato skin, celery leaves, the ends of zucchini, tough kale and broccoli stalks, spinach stems--I now throw it all in a designated scrap bag in my freezer.  When the bag gets full, I'll throw it all in some water and cook for a couple hours until the flavors are released.  After straining, I'll be left with a basic vegetable stock!  Ta-da!  Everything has a use if we look hard enough!