Gotta love the O.G.

Fact: I am a girl.
Fact: I live in Utah

Based on these 2 facts, I'm all but required to enjoy the classic soup, salad and breadsticks from Olive Garden. Problem is that I don't enjoy standing in line for an hour on any given weeknight to eat soup, salad and breadsticks. Seriously, it's good, but is it really THAT good?

Last week, I was craving me some minestrone from the O.G. and Leslie and I were thinking that it shouldn't been all that hard to make ourselves. With the help from our mom, we found a recipe that is almost exactly the same and every bit as delicious. We had to modify it a little to make it just right. My mom wrote about it on her blog, but I'll post the recipe since she didn't feel like she knew the ingredients well enough to do so.

Ingredients

• 1 cup finely minced celery
• 1 cup finely minced onion
• 1 cup finely minced carrot
• 1/4 cup butter
• can of cut green beans
• can of light kidney beans
• can of dark kidney beans
• can of chick peas
• 3/4 cup sliced carrot
• 3/4 cup coarsely chopped onion
• 3/4 cup sliced celery
• 3/4 cup chopped bell pepper
• 1 cup small shell macaroni
• 2 tablespoons parsley
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon basil
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• pepper
• parmesan cheese
• 3 quarts of vegetable broth
• I also added probably around half a tspn of garlic salt and thyme
• 2 cans of italian style tomatoes
• some frozen spinach (however much you like)
  

Directions

1. Saute the minced onion, celery and carrots in a VERY large soup pot with the butter until very brown.

2. Add the vegetable broth (we used boullion and water)

3. throw in all the cans of everything - we drained everything but the tomatoes - and the seasonings (that is add, everything but the pasta and the spinach)

4. We cooked it for probably about an hour, until the carrots were tender (they take forever) About 20 minutes before you are ready to serve it, add the spinach and pasta

Now, I'm not great at following recipes, so mine was more like a chopped up carrot, 2 sticks of celery, half a bell pepper, half a box of pasta, you get the picture. Ultimately, soup is really forgiving, so it's just a matter of how much you like certain ingredients.

We served it with garlic bread and parmesan cheese and it was awesome! The boys liked it, the kids liked it, it is probably the best soup I've ever had and we made it ourselves! It was such a proud day.

If you make it, let me know how it turns out since I'm totally obsessed with this soup at the moment and I want everyone to love it as much as me.