I grew up in a home where home-made vegetable soup was an absolute treat.  Everyone loved Mom's soup.  In fact we couldn't get enough of it. 

Now I make my own home-made soups, although I've changed Mom's recipes quite a bit, in order to make the soups a bit healthier.  Whereas Mom added meat to her soups, mine are completely vegetarian, very healthy, and still delicious.

I like my soups to be meals in themselves.  So, besides vegetables, I like my soups to contain pasta and either beans or peas, or both.  After all, if it's going to be my entire meal, it can't just be liquid and veggies; it has to have plenty of the filling stuff in it, too.   And when I don't feel like adding all of my own different ingredients, a very handy and tasty shortcut is provided by Manischewitz. 

Manischewitz sells several different varieties of soup mixes, in long, thin packages.  Each package contains some combination of beans, peas, pasta, dehydrated vegetables, and seasoning.  This review is for their "Minestrone" flavor. 

This particular flavor contains split green peas, split yellow peas, and two types of macaroni - circles and what looks like orzo.  There are also little tiny onions, carrots, and pieces of spinach.  As far as the seasoning goes, it's a powder consisting of celery seed, tomatoes, paprika, garlic, pepper, salt and sugar. 

Now if you follow the recipe on the package, you'd basically add the contents to 5 cups of boiling water, simmer until the peas are tender, and you'd be done.  Having tried the soup this way, I can tell you it's pretty good.  The flavor is tinged with tomato, and each of the four servings will contain lots of the peas and pasta.  But I, personally, prefer their chicken-based varieties, if I were going to make the soup according to their directions.   

As for me, instead of using the packet to make 5 cups of soup, as described above, I use it to make a gallon (16 cups) of soup.  I add plenty of my own veggies, and just a little bit more seasoning to make up for the extra water. I also add a can of tomato sauce.  By doing so, I stretch this package into several full meals.  And, amazingly, I still find the amount of peas and pasta provided in this package to be quite ample for that amount of soup. 

For me, the best part of this soup mix is the combination of green and yellow peas.  Considering I'm not a fan of traditional split-pea soup, I'm surprised I like the peas as much as I do.  But somehow, they're just delicious in this soup.  They give the soup an incredible texture, and really help turn "just soup" into a "meal".  Of course the two pasta shapes add to the filling nature as well.  But in this particular variety, the peas really make up most of the filling.  So, don't get this variety, unless you're a fan of peas.

Each packet is considered four servings.  Each serving contains 150 calories and 0 grams of fat.  Now for the bad part - that serving also contains 700mg of sodium.  Yikes! 

These packets cost around $2 and last a really long time.  I don't see an expiration date written on my packets, but I know I've had some stay in my pantry for a year, and they're still fine.  This product is lactose-free, vegetarian, and kosher.  As soup-starter's go, Mom trusted Manischewitz, and so do I.


ps: Epinions has the name spelled wrong in this listing.   The correct spelling Manischewitz, but we pronounce the w as if it were a v.



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