A discovery: soup bases are all the same.

Source for this soup is here. I love Eating Well's recipes - I make them all the time. Seriously.

I had some collards that were about a week old - and though I love the raw collard greens salad (as do my co-workers - it is quite popular with them), I wanted something different. Having made a few soups recently, I've come to discover that they all start out the same. Onion, celery, carrot (which I leave out sometimes, as I  really, really hate carrot), veggie or chicken broth, then the fixins.

I decided to include carrot, imagining that it would cook down so that it added the flavor but not so much that I was disgusted. It didn't quite work out that way, but it wasn't bad. 

Sauteing with olive oil:

I had some no-chicken broth left over, but not enough. I added in some veggie broth (made from my favorite  Rapunzel vegan bouillon cubes.) A can of Publix Greenwise organic chopped tomatoes, as well -

Then the collards and black eyed peas. I really, really love collards. My favorite part is the metallic smell that wafts to my nose as I cut them - they're so loaded with iron, you get a whiff as you chop them!

I served with the old standard, rosemary and garlic roasted red potatoes (to which I added more salt than usual, and roasted longer - best batch I've ever made)...also served with boule bread topped with a bit of garlic salt and shredded swiss cheese, broiled.