If you have ever spent time at the Monastery you know that the evening meal usually centers around soup. This seems to speak to let simplicity be our joyous and practical guide, a simple yummy soup to end a blessed day. This month as spring sets in, soups become lighter and brighter as our bodies have less need of the heaviness and warmth that winter demands. Yesterday was spent making vegetable broth in the Monastery kitchen and it is this month’s offering.
There is so much about this broth that speaks to simplicity. As you prepare veggies for other dishes, place peels and trimmings in a container and store it in the freezer. When you have about six cups you are ready to turn it into broth. You can save anything that is soup-like, i.e., carrot peels, celery tops, parsley stems, potato peels, bits of onion and garlic, stems of greens and so on.
Once you have six cups, coarsely chop them, and put them in a big pot with about seven cups of water. These proportions are approximate; just make sure you add enough water to cover the veggies.
We are fortunate to have an abundance of fresh rosemary at the Monastery so a generous handful of that gets thrown in, stems and all. If you don’t have herbs you can throw in a piece of ginger. Simmer this all for an hour, strain, and add salt and fresh pepper to taste.
This will keep in the refrigerator for a week or frozen for a month. You can use it for any soup that calls for a broth base or drink a cup when you want an infusion of nutritious broth. How fun and satisfying to use something that would have ended up discarded! No extra cost, no waste, and one less pre-packaged item to be purchased. Most exciting of all, one more step to living a bit more lightly on this beautiful earth.
This broth was inspired by Kate O’Donnell and found in her book Everyday Ayurveda.
In gassho,
Sequoia