Experimental Food Blog

I made the broccoli soup yesterday and decided to pick up the camera to try out food blogging. Here goes!!

Broccoli Soup from Holly Clegg's Trim & Terrific (original) cookbook:

The Goods:
4 cups fresh broccoli florets
1/4 cup water
1 onion, chopped
2/3 cup all purpose flour (not shown)
1.5 cups skim milk
28 ounces fat free vegetable broth or chicken broth
1 cup shredded reduced-fat Monterey Jack cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1/8 tsp dried thyme

Cook broccoli in a microwave dish in the water, cover for 8- 10 minutes or until tender (mine were tender in 6 minutes). Drain and set aside.

In a large pot coated with cooking spray, saute the onion over medium heat until softened, about 3- 5 minutes.


Broccoli and onions are great cancer fighting foods!!

In a small bowl (or measuring cup) mix together the flour and milk.

Stir the flour and milk mixture into the onion. Gradually add the vegetable broth (impossible to photograph since I was home by myself) and the broccoli.

Stir to combine. Cook over medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil, stirring constantly *this is important!*, for about 5 minutes, or until thickened.

Transfer the soup to a food processor or blender, puree the soup, and return to the pot over low heat.

Three cheers for food processors!!!

Be careful!! Hold on to that blade! Don't let THIS happen to you! Okay, so it wasn't really that traumatic. I didn't hurt myself at all, but it was a pain to have to fish out the blade from the hot soup. Try to avoid it.

Add the cheese, salt, pepper (another cancer fighting food!), and thyme, cooking until heated through and the cheese is melted. Serve immediately. Or you can do what I did, leave it on low heat and stir it every few minutes until everyone is ready to eat.

Somehow I didn't get a picture of the final product. Bad food blogger, bad bad!! So here's a picture of the leftovers. It's a very yummy soup! Give it a try!

The nutritional info: Serves 6- 8.
Calories 121, Protein 9g, Carbs 15g, Fat 3g, Calories from fat 24%, Saturated fat 2g, Dietary Fiber 2g, Cholestrol 9mg, Sodium 576mg
Diabetic Exchanges (I love that Holly Clegg includes this!): 0.5 lean meat, 0.5 starch, 1.5 vegetable

Since I was in the kitchen anyway I decided to roast the squash for future use. The butternut squash is for the Butternut Squash Enchiladas that we'll eat for family dinner on Sunday (along with a Taco Pie for those members of the family who require meat). The acorn squash is for something else, but I'm not going to tell you what just yet. Hehehe!!

Oh winter squash you roast up sooo beautifully!!!