Swiss Chard and Chickpea Minestrone

Two of my favorite ingredients (chickpeas and chard) in one place -- a hearty healthy vegetarian main-dish soup. With every bite, you can feel virtuous because there are so many good-for-you ingredients in every spoonful.

Although the recipe calls for the chard stems to be trimmed and tossed, I (as I usually do) chopped up the stems (and since I was using rainbow chard, the stems were beautiful ... scarlet, orange and bright yellow) and added them to the onions, carrots and celery I was sauteing. The stems added both flavor and visual appeal.

The recipe also called for tomato paste which I used this time, but next time I will replace with a can of diced tomatoes because I found that I missed having tomatoes in my minestrone.

This recipe calls for canned chickpeas and is a very doable weeknight meal.