May 4: Grandma Ruth's Minestrone

I did not make this recipe. I'm a little behind, and I gained a lot of weight this year, so I am doing the 3-day military diet for a few weeks.

ETA: 5/4/14

I made this recipe for dinner tonight. I put it in right before we left for church this morning. The recipe says to put a pound of ground beef in the Crock Pot with a cup of dried red beans. I did that, but didn't have time to take a photo of it. I cooked it on high for 2 hours.

When I got home from church, I gathered up these ingredients:

In with the beef and beans I put a package of frozen mixed vegetables, 2 cans of tomato sauce, a can of drained diced tomatoes, a package of shredded cabbage, a chopped onion, a cup of chopped celery, 1/2 cup of chopped parsley, a tablespoon each of dried basil and Italian seasoning, and a tsp. each of salt and pepper. I continued to cook it on low for about 6 hours.

Then I added a cup of elbow macaroni,

and cooked it for another hour:

In the middle of cooking, I added about a half a quart of chicken broth, because it looked like it was going to dry out. It ended up looking like this when it was all done:

This recipe was weird. I think that something was left out of it. The picture shows that it should be soup, but there was no liquid added to the recipe. It even called for the diced tomatoes to be drained. I wondered if the cabbage or some of the vegetables would create some liquid, but it didn't. I knew the beans wouldn't get cooked without it, which is why I added the chicken broth. Maybe next time I would add a quart of water at the beginning or something. The other weird thing is that the recipe calls for cooked macaroni, and then to cook it for a whole hour more. I think that must have been a typo. I added the macaroni uncooked, and it turned out perfectly cooked. The flavor of this minestrone was okay, but it's not the best recipe I've ever made. I might skip this one next time.