Tomato Asparagus Soup

It seems I'm running out of food. My apartment's pantry is getting bare, and my refrigerator is looking more desolate every time I open it. I didn't really have many fresh ingredients sitting around, so I decided to use up as man of them as I could in a single dish. And that dish was a soup!

Can't beat soup for simplicity and taste.

Ingredients:

  - 2 tbsp olive oil

  - 1 medium onion, chopped coarsely

  - 4 cloves garlic, chopped coarsely.

  - 1/2 pound asparagus, chopped into 1 inch pieces

  - 1 green bell pepper

  - 1 carrot

  - 14 oz can of diced tomato

  - 6 cups of water

  - 1 tbsp chicken bullion (2 large cubes)

  - 1 1/2 tsp marjoram

  - 1/2 tsp oregano

  - 1/3 lb pasta or noodles

Instructions:

1. On medium-low heat, saute the garlic and onion until the onion start to caramelize.
2. Add the water and bullion, and bring the broth to a boil.
3. While the water comes to a boil, finely grate the carrot and the bell pepper (or use a food processor)
4. Once the broth is boil, reduce heat to low and add the can of tomatoes (juice and all), the pepper, the carrot, and the asparagus. Also add the marjoram and the oregano. Simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes.
5. Add the pasta, and continue simmering until the pasta is done

This is a really simple recipe that ended up giving me a great tasting and very healthy soup. I love the asparagus in it. I mentioned in a previous post that I'm a huge asparagus fan, and once I had the idea of putting it in a soup it wouldn't leave my mind. I chose to grate up the pepper and carrot so that they would thicken the soup a bit more - you could absolutely just chop or dice them instead. The texture would just be a little bit different. As a warning, grating bell peppers is evidently a huge pain. A food processor or blender would have made life much easier there. 

Using stewed tomatoes instead of plain would add a little bit of punch to the dish, although most of the flavors in stewed tomatoes are already in the soup elsewhere. Using a red instead of a green bell pepper could give it a little more sweetness, if that's your kind of thing.

For something that's so easy to do, I'm really happy with how this turned out. It's also pretty healthy - the only thing in there that isn't really good for you is the pasta, and there isn't a ton of pasta in the dish. Tomato, carrot, asparagus, and bell pepper are all very healthy ingredients.

Final Verdict:

Taste: 4/5

Ease: 4/5 if you use a food processor, 3/5 if you have to do all that grating.

Health: 4/5


**Edit**
I edited the amount of pasta to 1/3 lb from its original 1/2 lb. The 1/2 lb I originally cooked was just a bit too much.