Vegetable Tortilla Soup

I went on the Caribbean cruise a week ago.  After my trip from the Celebrity cruise, I needed to lose the 6 pounds I gained from eating all the gourmet food on the ship. I didn't want to go get more groceries until I lost the weight.  I still have some tortillas in the fridge and needed more ideas to use them.  As usual I went searching on my favorite website Allrecipes.com for some more tortilla recipes.  I found this vegetable tortilla soup and the reviews were so good that I decided to give it a try. It turned out that the whole family loved the soup.  I changed the recipe to suit whatever I had in my kitchen.

Vegetable Tortilla Soup

adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 (1 pound) package frozen pepper and onion stir fry mix *
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 1 (14 ounce) can organic diced tomatoes
• 1 (6 oz.) can Contadina organic tomato paste
• 1 (4 ounce) cans chopped green chile peppers, drained*
• 2 (14 ounce) cans chicken broth
• 2 cups of water 
• 3/4 cup black beans, presoaked for 20 minutes to cut down the cooking time
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 package frozen roasted kernel corn*
• Some salsa hot sauce
• Home made tortilla chips
• 1 cup reduced fat Mexican four cheese blend
• 1 organic avocado - peeled, pitted and diced*
• Some cilantro, chopped

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the pepper and onion stir fry mix, garlic, and cumin, and cook 5 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Mix in the roasted kernel corn, cook for 2 minutes. 
2. Add in diced tomatoes, tomato paste and green chile peppers. Pour in the broth, black bean and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 30 minutes.
3. Serve in bowls over equal amounts of tortilla chips. Top with cheese and avocado.  Garnish with cilantro. 
4. Add some hot sauce if you like spicy hot food. 

Note:

*All these can be found at Trader Joe's.

1.  I only used 1 can of green chile peppers because I thought it would be too hot to use 3 cans as mentioned in the original recipe.  It wasn't hot at all and I had to add some salsa hot sauce to spice it up. 
2. I baked the tortilla chips and preferred to eat them with avocado and have soup at the same time. 
3. I do not have vegetable broth at home,so I used chicken broth. I added the black bean for protein and also because I wanted it to taste like chili soup. Either way, this is a very healthy and delicious soup.