Beef and Barley Soup

'Tis the soup season! Did you guys hear Steve groan from there? Ha ha. He does not love soup. At least, he does not love it in abundance. But for this week and next I am making the soup recipes I had marked this summer that I couldn't bring myself to make in July. It's from the Better Homes & Gardens 5 Ingredient Favorites cookbook. I made some bread in the bread machine to have with it. It is personally one of my favorite things to eat...soup and fresh bread mmmmmmmm.

Beef and Barley Soup
12 oz boneless beef chuck roast (they had this at Walmart but it was like in 3 lb portions...way more than I needed and I didn't want to buy that much...I bought stew beef instead...it's going in the crock pot anyway so I figured it was okay)
Nonstick cooking spray
4 cups water
1 10.5 oz can condensed French onion soup
1 cup purchased shredded carrot
1/2 cup regular barley (as opposed to quick barley, which they do have)
1 tsp dried thyme or oregano, crushed (I used thyme...I used oregano last night...gotta shake it up a bit)
Salt and black pepper

Here are the steps, in the enumerated method:
1. Trim fat from meat. Cut meat into 1/2 inch pieces. Coat a large skillet with cooking spray; heat over medium-high heat. Cook meat in hot skillet until brown.
2. In a crock pot, combine meat, water, soup, carrot, barley, and thyme.
3. Cover and cook on low-heat setting for 7 to 8 hours or on high-heat setting for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Don't do like I did and unplug the crock pot instead of the bread machine when the bread is done. The crockpot was off for like 2 hours. Ugh, how frustrating!! But it ended up okay. I like my soup piping hot, so I ended up microwaving my bowl, but nobody else thought it needed it. And the beef was cooked, and the barley was done, the carrots were a bit crunchy but that's okay. This made a bunch of soup so I froze what we didn't eat to have later. I think I will keep this one because it was easy to make it ahead and it will be good to reheat.