Barley stew

I made barley once a long time ago and my husband apparently loved it. I never made it again, but tried barley another way that was not as much of a success. Then the opened bag of barley sat in the cupboard, lonely. When I started my daughter on solids (cereal), the third one we tried was barley. My husband turned to me and said, "you made that amazing barley dish once and you never made it again. I loved it! It was like a stew or something." I didn't even know what recipe I had used, but I knew had to find it or try something else. So after trying to find the recipe I used and having no luck, today I browsed the Internet and came up with tonight's dinner: a vegetable barley stew. You could make this truly vegetarian by substituting vegetable broth for the chicken broth I used. I would've added potatoes (but I finished the bag yesterday) and thought about adding meat, but decided to keep it simple.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled, halved and chopped
1 container (227g) sliced mushrooms
2 garlic cloves, pressed
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 can (796 ml) diced tomatoes in juice
1 cup pearl barley, rinsed
1 carton (946 ml) chicken stock
2 handfuls baby spinach
Salt and pepper

Directions:

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat.
Add onions; sauté until onions begin to soften, about 3-5 minutes.
Add carrots, season with salt and pepper, saute until they soften, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, garlic, and rosemary; increase heat to medium-high and sauté until mushrooms soften and begin to brown, stirring often, about 7 minutes.
Add tomatoes with juice; stir 1 minute.
Add barley and chicken stock; bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until barley is tender and most of the liquid has evaporated, about 30 minutes.
Add spinach; stir until wilted. Cover and let simmer another 5-10 minutes.
If the barley isn't done or it's not at the consistency you'd like, you can add more stock till it gets where you'd like it.

As a main dish, you'll probably get 4 servings. If you pair it with a nice meat dish or other side, you can probably get 6 servings out of it. And my husband said he really liked this version!

Below is the pic I remembered to take as I was packing up our lunches.

A new variation: A recently used this recipe but changed up some of the ingredients and it turned out yummy once again! Instead of using mushrooms, I substituted one head of broccoli (chopped into small pieces) and 4 potatoes (chopped into small pieces).  I added the broccoli when I added the carrots and added the potatoes when I added the tomatoes. I also used slightly more than 1 cup of pot barely (rinsed) and closer to 1-1/2 cartons of chicken stock.  I cooked it for about 45 minutes until most of the liquid was evaporated and the barley and potatoes were tender.  I continued on with the spinach as above.  Then I added freshly grated Parmesan over each bowl of stew.