Vegetable soup

Serves 4

Here is a recipe from my Golden Treasury of Tolerated Teen Meals. The point here is to sneak as many vegetables as possible into the soup.

Begin with 6 cups of chicken or vegetable stock. Bring it to a boil in a soup pot. Onions never register as a presence, so use plenty -- chop and add 1 medium yellow onion to the boiling broth. Celery would seem to be similarly invisible, but my girls recognize and welcome it in soup; let's say 4 stalks, chopped. A little garlic is good -- 1 clove, crushed. Innocuous dill, 1 big tablespoon, and a little thyme, 1 teaspoon, do for our herbs. Nobody ever objects to carrots, though if you're eating the soup too, beware their sometimes excessive sweetness. Try 1 cup, unpeeled, sliced into disks. All the preceding go into the pot at more or less the same time, with plenty of salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 to 30 minutes or until all the vegetables are tender.

At that point, consider an addition or two. Fresh corn, for example, never hurts -- 1 cup of kernels sliced from 3 or 4 ears. And then we begin to walk the line -- green beans in limited quantities can function as a stealth veggie, as may the occasional leafy green. Add a large handful of green beans cut into 1-inch lengths or 2 cups stemmed spinach leaves. But even without them, you're up to four vegetables, so why push it?

Teenagers are lulled by the presence of pasta, so that's your starch. Put in half a cup of small pasta of any compact shape, return the soup to a boil, reduce to a high simmer, and continue cooking for 10 minutes or until the pasta is done. Al dente? Well, good luck; pasta is one food my kids like mushy. John Burgess