Vegetable and Barley Soup

This is my second recipe I am blogging about this week. I could blog about the recipe to the frozen meat pie....but once it had thawed, I realized it was APPLE pie. Good thing I had back up! We ended up eating Friday nights planned meal instead....plus yummy dessert!

So, this soup was another BIG keeper. It is almost identical to my tortellini soup, all I had to do was make a few adjustments. I added celery and barley and I replaced the chicken broth with vegetable broth. I made this the night before and I just added the spinach before serving. This would be a fantastic freezer meal.

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp cooking oil
2 cups of chopped onion
4 Garlic cloves, minced
12 cups/3 L of Vegetable Stock (I used Organic)
14 oz can of Diced Tomatoes, drained
1 1/2 cup of chopped carrot
1 1/2 cup chopped Zucchini with peel
1 cup of chopped peppers (I used red, yellow and orange)
1 cup of chopped celery
2 Bay Leaves
1 tsp of Dried Rosemary
1/4 tsp Salt
3/4 - 1 cup of Barley (I used 1/2 cup origianlly and it wasn't enought to my liking)
3 cups of fresh Spinach leaves

Instructions:

1. Heat cooking oil in Dutch Oven or large pot on medium high heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook for 5- 10 minutes, stirring often, until onion is softened.

2. Add Barley, veggies, broth and spices. Stir and bring to a boil. Cook until Barley is fully cooked. I cooked mine for almost an hour. 
3. Add Spinach, stir and cook for about 2 minutes. Discard Bay leaves.