Vegan "Hamburger" Soup

So remember that time when I told you I was a soup kind of girl.... well...that hasn't changed much! I don't know if I'll ever get sick of soups. Soup and bread is like my ultimate comfort food. Whenever the world goes wrong and I just want to bury myself in a hole and hide away from the rest of the world, you can usually find me, not in a hole, but in the kitchen making soup and fresh bread. There's just something so calming and homey about a big bowl of soup that brightens up the worst days. I've been struggling a lot lately, this is one of the reasons for my sparse blog posts. All of my law applications are done and now I'm starting to hear back from different law schools. Overall it's been great news. I've been accepted to some amazing programs and I have been very blessed with several scholarship offers. However, I'm still waiting to hear back from a few schools and as the deadline for seat deposits rapidly approaches I'm slowly becoming more and more of a walking disaster. Choosing where to go to law school is honestly the most difficult part of this entire process. It's emotionally, mentally and physical exhausting, and my idea of where I want to go changes almost daily (if not hourly). There are so many different statistics and elements to consider and sometimes I just get lost in it all. On top of all that I'm taking 17 hours and I'm a senior. So I pretty much feel like I'm drowning all the time and that at any moment someone in a big top hat is going to walk by me and stamp a big "Failure to Thrive" on my forehead and kick me out of "real life". Don't be alarmed! In all honesty I'm ok! I'm just going through some major waves right now and I think I forgot how to steer my boat.

But anyways I digress. Soup. Even though soup can't make life decisions for me it does the next best thing, warm my soul and keep me alive! What's great about this soup is that it doesn't take a whole lot of prep work, so if your life is crazy like mine then this is the meal for you! You literally just pop most of the ingredients in the crockpot then ta-da easy-peasy soulful goodness!

Ingredients
3 carrots sliced
3 sticks of celery sliced
2 cups of peeled and cubed potatoes
1 can of tomato sauce
4 cups of water
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tbsp dried oregano
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp garlic powder
2 cups of uncooked macaroni pasta
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 a bag of gardien beefless crumbles

Instructions
1. Add carrots, celery, potatoes, tomato sauce, water, nutritional yeast and spices into the crockpot. Cook on high for 6 hours or until potatoes are tender.
2. If you would like your soup base to be smooth use an immersion blender to blend the stew until creamy or scoop out the ingredients into a blender and then place them back in the crock pot. If you don't mind a chunky hamburger stew feel free to skip the blender/pureeing step altogether.
3. Add in pasta and continue to cook soup on high for an additional 45-60 minutes or until the desired tenderness of pasta is reached.
4. In a skillet warm olive oil over medium heat then cook garden beefless crumbles for about 7-10 minutes.
5. After the pasta and beefless crumbles are cooked add your beefless crumbles to the soup and serve warm

Note: If after refrigerating the soup you may find that you need to add in additional water to make it soup-y (a technical term I assure you) again. Simply spoon out the serving of soup you would like, add a little water and then microwave it for about 1-2 minutes.