Chris's "Damned-near Instant" Vegetable and Veggie Protein Soup

One skill I've developed over the years is slacker food prep. Because who wants to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, am I right? Sometimes you can get something really filling and flavorful with minimal prep time and few ingredients. It's an added bonus when those ingredients are cheap.

Recently, I discovered the life-changing magic of textured vegetable protein A.K.A. TVP. It's cheap, easy to store, and easy to prepare. So I had this thought the other night. Can I find some dried vegetables online and make a filling and delicious soup from them with TVP for protein? To answer that question, I went online and bought me a 2 pound (smidge under a kilogram) bag of dried vegetables. These were sold as "dehydrated vegetable flakes for making ramen or simple vegetable soup".The mix I bought contains the following:

• dehydrated sweet potatoes
• dehydrated butternut squash
• dehydrated carrots
• dehydrated cabbage

And yeah, turns out that I can make a quick and tasty soup out of these and TVP. Can you boil water? Can you throw shit in a bowl? Then you can make this soup, and you can customize it to taste.

Directions

• Re-hydrate TVP per package directions. Probably "pour one cup of boiling water over one cup of granulated TVP". That ratio seems to be universal. I used one cup of TVP for this initial batch. Put it aside and let it sit a while.
• Boil more water. The directions on my bag of soup veggies claim six cups of water to one cup of veggies. I suspect that either the OCR program on my phone is high on meth or the manufacturer's directions are incorrect. Either way, this comes out fine for soup. So I boiled nine cups of water since I was going to use one and one half cup of dried veggies.
• For flavor, add bouillon to the boiled water. I use Herb Ox vegetable bouillon (I've used that brand for years). Despite the name, there's no ox in it (thank $deity), and the ingredient list says it's vegan. Add bouillon to taste and let it dissolve.
• Add dried veggies, and let sit for 15 minutes or so.
• Add TVP and stir.
• Season to taste. I threw a bunch of chili powder in mine because I really like chili powder. I thought about adding some other seasonings, but I was hungry and lazy.
• Stir once more and serve.

This made quite a bit of food. I had a large bowl this morning, and so did my girlfriend. I had another large bowl this afternoon. There is still some left in the container, but it's mostly broth.

It would go very well over some brown rice, but I didn't have any made. It's quite filling on its own, however. And hey, not having any grain is better for my blood sugar. I'll probably be playing around with other thickening agents. E.G., I have some ground flax seed that I've used for similar purposes. Or maybe masa flour (like I used to use sometimes in chili) would be good. Anyway I think I have a strong base for some quick and tasty food.