Cream of Broccoli Soup

The days suddenly turned from spring-like to rainy and windy again, as they do so often after a first little false-spring weather that tricked all the daffodils into coming up! The blossoms are all out on my fruit trees and do look beautiful against the contrasting dark grey skies! But we went from barbecues and potato salad back to soups and stew weather!

Cream of Broccoli Soup. I combined a few recipes last night to make this delicious soup. My eldest called it a 3-star favorite! I put 4 cups chicken broth, 1.5 cups water, a chopped onion, and two 10 oz packages of frozen chopped broccoli in a pot. I was, as is typical, basically combining two different recipes because they each had intriguing parts to me. The first recipe called for adding diced potatoes and then simmering for an hour! I didn't have that much time. The second recipe called for 1/3 cup of oatmeal as the thickener, so I went with that. I also added some nutmeg and a bit of cayenne pepper and some regular black pepper as well. Brought this all to a simmer and cooked for about 15 minutes. I used my hand-immersion mixer thingy (what are those called?) to blend the soup together. Much easier than pouring hot soup into a blender! I then added a cup of half and half and let it warm up. Definitely a winner! If you wanted to cut down on the fat, add milk instead. Or try it without adding anything.

For anyone who's curious, the first recipe also called for satueeing the onion in a bit of olive oil, which I skipped and don't think it mattered much. It also called for all water and a bouillon cube but I try to avoid the high salt stuff. But if you're out of chicken broth, go for it! Both recipes called for fresh broccoli, which would probably make this soup even better.