Every so often, I want to make something hearty, nourishing and completely vegetarian.  In the summer, I will fill this craving with a plethora of different salads.  However, something in my body clock clicks off after the temperature drops below 50 degrees and I no longer want salads.  When that happens, I turn to soup.  

Now, as a child, my associations with beets consisted of canned, sliced beets in the salad bar at the diner, Russian borscht (which I hated as a kid) and the really yummy, garlicky Russian beet salads that my mom would bring home from Brighton Beach.  We didn’t cook much with beets at home, mostly because my mom didn’t like her hands to turn purple from handling them.

It wasn’t until I moved out of Brooklyn that I began to experiment with cooking beets.  They are wonderfully filling and nutritious.  They have a sweet, potato-like flavor and texture and they make a delicious addition to vegetable soup.

Now, my beet barley soup is a rustic kind of soup.  Each time I make it, I put different vegetables in it, depending upon what I have in the house.  So, I will give you the basic recipe, along with some optional variations.

Ingredients:

• 64 ounces of vegetable stock
• Two large beets, peeled and cubed
• Three carrots, large dice
• Two celery stalks, large dice
• Two parsnips, large dice
• 1 turnip, large dice
• 1 potato, large dice
• 1 large (or two medium) onion, sliced
• 1 ½ cups sliced mushrooms
• 1 leek, cleaned and sliced into large dice
• ½ cup barley
• Three tablespoons of salt
• Ground black pepper to taste
• Two tablespoons minced parsley
• *1 cup fresh cranberry or cannelloni beans (I use the fresh beans in September, when they are in harvest)

Method:

• The hardest part of this recipe is the time-consumption in chopping the vegetables.  Once you have all your vegetables prepared, add them to a large stock pot, along with the beans and vegetable stock (you can use water in place of the veggie stock), salt and pepper and bring to a simmer.  Do not let it boil, just simmer.
• After about a ½ hour, add the barley to the soup and continue cooking on low heat until all the vegetables are tender.  
• Taste, and adjust seasoning, then serve.