Food Friday: Broccoli Cheese Soup

 Dear One loves the Broccoli Cheese Soup he has eaten at Panera.  Well!  That is something to emulate in a healthier way. This is it.

Lenny and Shalva Gale on Life Is No Yoke have a wonderful recipe which I made.  It really is delicious. I will show what changes I made...because I almost always make changes to recipes.

 

This bowl of soup (mine!) has some ground black cumin seeds on top which just add to the enjoyment of eating this.

To make this soup the first thing I did was to chop up a smallish head of broccoli into small bits (Dear One loves Broccoli Cheese Soup but NOT broccoli and has asked that I chop it fine, so I do.  Mostly.) Since there was not very much broccoli in the pot, I chopped up a bag of broccoli and cauliflower and added it to the pot, then steamed in the microwave for 4 minutes. I knew it was ready because I could smell the broccoli.

At this point I put all the other ingredients into the Vitamix and blended for 5 minutes.

The other ingredients:

Almond milk-1 cup
Nutritional Yeast-1/4 cup
Raw almonds-1/2 cup
Raw cashews-1/2 cup
Red bell pepper, de-seeded-1 large
Kosher salt-2 teaspoons (I will only use 1 teaspoon next time)
Onion powder-2 teaspoons
Garlic powder-1 teaspoon
Vegetable broth-1 cup
Tofu-1/2 block

A little crushed red pepper is called for but I forgot/left it out!

When the above has finished its 5 minutes in the blender I threw in the broccoli and blended again on speed 1 for a few pulses but knew it was still not small enough for Dear One so I ran the speed up to 5 or so then back down.

First comment from Dear One: "Too much broccoli."  Well, he is right, there was too much broccoli but it could not hurt him and he DID eat his whole bowl.  We may have company for lunch who can share which will mean he only has to eat this version one more time...!

#LifeIsNoYoke is a such great website to go to, and YouTube channel to watch.  So many good recipes! Such nice people.  And their family is a delight to see grow up, involved in their mom and dad's work.