Must-haves:

2/3 cup Vegetable broth
3-4 Carrots peeled and sliced
1 potato peeled and cubed
1 can petite diced tomatoes, with liquid (garlic or other type of flavored if desired)
1 can Chickpeas/Garbanzo beans, well drained
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper (I prefer white pepper but anything to add a little pepper to it is fine)

Options/additional suggestions:

1 medium onion chopped OR jar of pearl onions, drained
1-2 parsnips, peeled and sliced fairly thin
1-2 turnips, peeled and cubed fine
1 small-medium rutabaga, cubed

This is all very easy to put together in a slow cooker or Crockpot. If you have something to add or are short something it should turn out fine, it is fun to experiment with this. Very old school, for years people had to make do with what they had and what was available at certain times of the year. I would consider this more of a winter dish, based on the ingredients.

Simply add the ingredients you want to use into the slow cooker and I generally run it on high all day. If it seems to be boiling too much I might turn it down to "low" for awhile, but if you are gone all day I would use "high". Unless it will be cooking a lot longer than 6 hours, "low" will probably be fine in that case.

I stir it a few times over the course of 6 hours or so, it probably would be fine on it's own. I chop things fairly small to make sure it cooks OK, especially the parsnips if you use them, or they will be significantly harder than the other vegetables. I have used both chopped onion and a jar of pearl onions, my wife and I both preferred the pearl onion taste. The 2/3 cup vegetable broth will leave me with enough broth to keep things boiling, but not so much that it ends up too "soupy" when it is done.

My latest batch was our favorite so far, we used the "must have" ingredients, the tomatoes I used were garlic-flavored, then also used 1 parsnip and 1 rutabaga, no onion.

Submitted by: Dan Gillitzer