Cooking: Vegetable Soup Stock

So I picked up the Wagamama Cookbook, which is for a lot of soups and ramen type food. One of the basic soup bases is a vegetable soup base that uses Chinese cabbage, leeks, onions, white and sweet potatoes, and a few other things I couldn't find, so I made a lot of subsitutions. 

My crock pot was filled to the brim!

I couldn't find some of the items, like the butternut squash because our grocery store was out of them. My crock pot is very small, I decided to modify the recipe a little and added beans. I had a brussel sprout, my latest obsession  so I added one of those, too. I was supposed to add some tomatoes, but I forgot to add those.

Without the lid on. So colorful!

The recipe said to simmer on the stove, but my cats tend to get on the stove, plus our stove tends to burn out if I leave it on simmer for too long, so I decided to crock pot it. Generally I'll use a crock pot for anything that requires a long time to simmer. I ended up having it on high for about 3 hours and on simmer for about four hours.

All done!

It came out looking very green and smelled very earthy. I didn't add any spice or salt to the broth when it cooked, so I had to add it to the broth after I strained it.

Strained. Oops, some carrots fell into the strainer.

When the broth was strained, it was a nice brown color. Very tasty, I think, but it will need some good noodles for it to really be good. The taste is very green. I think I should have added the tomatoes. I remembered to add the spices to the broth before I put it in the freezer.

The nice thing is all the sweet and russet potatoes I mashed together with the remains of the leek, then added a tablespoon of butter and a bunch of garlic, so I have some mashed potatoes to use later if I need some. I hate wasting food like that.

The soup I intend to make is the swordfish ramen, but I'm waiting to find some swordfish on sale. Once I find the fish, I'll take the broth out of the freezer and make the soup itself!