Summery Beef Soup

My sister and brother-in-law, Angela and David, joined the local CSA.  I have no idea what that actually stands for, but it is a produce club.  Every week we get a box filled with just-picked veggies and herb, a bouquet of flowers, and anything else the woman feels like throwing in there.  It is kind of funny when you open up our refrigerator and are literally attacked by the mountain of greenery that won't fit in the crisper.  (If you looked a little closer you would also notice that there is nothing else in their besides a mostly gone gallon of organic skim milk.)  I also must tell you that we have no idea how to cook these veggies (it's not quite cucumber, zucchini, and tomato season yet).  So I made this fun soup to cook some of the veggies.  It cooks super fast with these small, new veggies (store bought veggies are much bigger so you'll have to eyeball the amounts) and I left it without any thickener to keep it light.  We had it with some garlic bread and a tiny bit of grated parmesan cheese.

Summery Beef Soup

10 cups of beef broth

1 pound beef stew chunks

1 onion (I left these as rings for fun)

3 cloves garlic

5 bay leaves (okay, I love bay leaves)

a bunch of baby turnips (peeled and chunked)

a bunch of smallish carrots (peeled and sliced into rounds)

the greens of 2 leeks plus the bulb of 1 leek (sliced into rounds)

a couple of splashes of worchestershire sauce

1/2 tsp hoisin sauce (this is a yummy asian sauce used in Pho, a Thai soup)

salt and pepper

Heat the broth, add onion, garlic, and bay leaves, add beef, while they are cooking, cut up the other veggies, then add worchestershire, hoisin and seasoning, let cook until everything is soft and beef is cooked throughout.  Serve over egg noodles.