Roasted Vegetable Minestrone

About a month ago my niece Melissa (who was born on my 6th birthday) asked if I wanted to be a part of blogging about cooking Pioneer Woman recipes. She was asked by her friend Alexis, who I have met through another friend, Savannah. Small world, right?
The idea is that there is a group of ladies and each week one of us gets to pick what we make. My week was last week (I swear I did make this last week) and I picked Roasted Vegetable Minestrone.
I took pictures of my journey, but just look at her link, I really can't outdo her lovely photos!!
Instead of buying the cans of beans, I bought the dried ones in bulk. I would recommend just buying the dang cans. Sometimes I'm just too cheap.

Anyway, I pretty much followed the recipe to a "T" after that. Usually, I like to follow a recipe how it's supposed to be made and then when I'm eating it, I decide what I would change.
For instance, I would definitely use about 4-5 cloves of garlic when I'm sauteing the carrots, onion and celery.

And I really am not a fan of the low sodium chicken broth. For heaven's sake, you just have to end up adding more salt to make it taste good.

And when I'm roasting the vegetables, I might throw in an eggplant if I'm feeling really crazy.



Lookin good!!

When I was done with the soup, I shredded up some spinach into confetti for garnish and grated some Parmesan cheese onto the top off it.

I made up some french bread and spinach salad w/ blue cheese dressing for side dishes.

It was a winner, I'm definitely going to try this again with my tweaks!!


This also got rave reviews last week. Click on the picture for a link to the recipe!