Mexican Chicken Tortilla Soup

I was talking to my mom the other day and while we were talking she was looking at her email and had this lovely recipe in her inbox.  I told her to send it on to me so I could try it.  It just so happened to be a Thursday afternoon and I grocery shop on Friday mornings so it was perfect timing.  When I got home from grocery shopping I boiled and shredded the chicken which takes me about an hour total.  Then I just set in the fridge (or freezer) for later use: that way it doesn't take such a huge chunk of time to make dinner.

I didn't have to modify this recipe too much.  I am not on a paleo diet and they are big fans of using coconut stuff.  Whenever I see coconut oil I just use olive oil or butter.  So that was my only real change.  Instead of using 2 cups crushed tomatoes I used one 14.5 ounce can of petite diced tomatoes.  Otherwise I used the recipe as written.  Let me amend that: I did add some red pepper and some garlic powder because we like it, but you don't have to do that.   

Here are my veggies softening in the pot.  OOoooo.  

And here is my finished product.  I topped mine with avocados and cheddar cheese (not paleo).  I did not use cilantro because my husband doesn't like it and I don't like it enough to buy a big bunch of it to throw most of it away.

The only change I would make would be to add more broth.  It wasn't very soupy and I just wanted more.  So I'll probably start by adding one more cup of broth to the soup.  This soup has a nice amount of spice and isn't too hot.  I really enjoyed it: my husband had to add salsa to his to spice it up.