I made a pretty large pot of soup, still have leftovers that I ate yesterday, will eat again tonight and probably finish off for lunch tomorrow.
I had ~12 ounces of mushrooms in the fridge that I had accidentally leftover because I forgot to put them in a stew I made last week, so I needed to use them (which inspired the soup in the first place). I always have carrots, celery, onion and garlic on hand - I snack on carrots and celery during the day, I use celery for my tuna salad that I make every week, garlic and onion I use almost every time I cook. Cabbage I keep a head in the fridge pretty frequently because I like snacking on it raw, making coleslaw, making soup with cabbage (even though I didn't use cabbage in the soup this time) or just using for a lot of different meals. I used an entire head - half for coleslaw, half to go with the beef.
Broccoli and zucchini are the weird ones that I tend to not always have around. I was going to snack on the crowns and use the stems for a vegetable stock, but the broccoli was getting old and I was lazy so I ended up not using the stems. The zucchini...I don't really know why I bought it in the first place ¯\(ツ)/¯
As for stock, I had half a quart of bone broth left over in the fridge from when I made stew (the one I forgot to put the mushrooms in), so I used that and a half quart of mushroom broth (other half still in the fridge). I just filled the rest of the pot with water.
So all in all, it was a pretty efficient soup.
Real question on the soup. How do you manage the ingredients?
It's required that you buy a broccoli crown, and you've used two stems. A tray of mushrooms and you've used half of one. A slice of carrot. One kidney bean. A few chops of a cabbage. A quart of stock, and you've used two cups.
I've come to recognize that you can buy a head of cabbage for two dollars and throw out what you don't eat, it grows on trees. but all of the ingredients are a bit expensive. Please rebut.