Amazing Mushroom Barley Soup

In my attempts to reduce our food bill I have been looking for recipes that are inexpensive. I came across a recipe on allrecipes.com but I modified it quite a bit-here's my recipe-

Nicole's Vegan Mushroom Barley Soup

• 1 c. barley
• 3 c. water
• 2 tbs. margarine(I use willow run)
• 2 onions chopped
• 1 carrot thinly sliced
• 2 stalks celery thinly sliced
• 2 cloves garlic minced
  
• 10 oz. mushrooms chopped
• 5 c. veggie broth(I used knorr)
• 2/3 c. red wine
  
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 1/2 tsp. dried rosemary

In a large pot combine barley and water. Bring to a boil,lower heat and simmer 30 minutes.
Meanwhile in another pan heat margarine and saute onions carrots and celery for 10 minutes. Add mushrooms and garlic and saute 5 more minutes. Add broth and wine to veggies and simmer15 minutes. Add mixture to barley and add salt,pepper and rosemary.

This soup was absolutely delicious. It is rich and tasted very decadent although there is hardly any fat in it. Definitely a winner. The best part is that the barley cost 50 cents and the mushrooms ended up costing around a dollar because they were marked down. Everything else was stuff I always have on hand-a perfect inexpensive pantry meal! Feel free to experiment too-white wine instead of red,rice instead of barley and so on and so on-this recipe is very forgiving.