Meatless Monday: chickpea and vegetable soup

Soup, pre-mulching

As of the last fortnight we've started menu planning in an attempt to reduce our grocery bill, which has increased by about 50 percent in the last two years. Part of this involves attempting to use stuff from the fridge, freezer and pantry rather than buying lots of new ingredients each week. Obviously the effectiveness of that will reduce as our stockpile does, but it's working quite well so far. So it was that during last week's planning session I decided we needed to eat something involving lots of chickpeas, and concocted said soup. I used:

2 tins of chickpeas, including the liquid from one tin
Two and a bit large carrots, sliced thinly
A few bits of floppy celery from the fridge, sliced thinly
1 large white potato, chopped
Half a red onion, diced
Half a teaspoon of minced garlic
A sprig of rosemary
500ml vegetable stock
A slosh of milk

1. Saute the onion, celery, carrots and garlic in a bit of oil in a big saucepan.
2. Add the potato, stock, chickpeas plus juice and rosemary, crank up the heat and cook until the vegetables are soft (20-30 minutes?). I took the rosemary out after about 10 minutes thinking the flavour might be overpowering but next time I probably wouldn't bother. Next time I do it I might use cumin and ginger instead of rosemary.
3. Add the milk and mulch with a hand blender.
4. We had it served with a bit of plain yoghurt, plus toast.

Not souper glamorous, haha, but nutritious and tasty and fed two people with leftovers for probably less than $5.

This post is part of the Veggie Mama's Meatless Monday series.