It’s always so good to come home from a business trip and sleep in your own bed. What I hate is the catching up you’re left with on the weekend – the chores you didn’t get to do during the week. This time for me, I had some produce in the fridge that got left unused that I now had to either figure out what to do with, or throw out.  I absolutely hate throwing out food, so I usually try to experiment and, while it’s not always the case, every now and then I end up with something pretty good…. like this broccoli soup.

Here’s what I used:

• 1 large bag of broccoli
• 2 brown onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 bag of baby carrots
• 1/2 stick of earth balance
• 1 12oz bag of cheese
• 2 cans of vegetable broth
• salt
• 2 cups of pasta (optional)
• some chives for garnish (optional)

Keep in mind I improvised and used items I already had. So you can too. I’m sure you’ll get just as delicious results if you used chicken broth instead of vegetable broth, or if you used more carrots and less onions, or added cream, or used a variety of cheeses.

I started by putting the onions through the food processor to get it down to a fine puree. I warmed up the pot and drizzled in some olive oil, then poured in the pureed onion.  Then I did the same with the carrots – chopped them up fine in the food processor and added them to the onions. While that was going on, I had already started boiling water to do a quick cook on the broccoli. As soon as the water came to a boil, I dropped in the broccoli and left the florets in the hot water for under a minute – you can take them out as soon as they turn bright green. 

I strained the broccoli and also pureed all of it in the food processor, then added that to the onions and carrots.

Now you can add the cans of vegetable broth and let it simmer on low heat.

Once everything comes to a boil, start stirring in the cheese, little by little. I had yogurt cheese from Trader Joe’s in my fridge so I used that. But all cheese is delicious to me, so I feel like anything would do… sharp cheddar would probably be amazing. As soon as the cheese melts, you’re practically done.

Since it’s just me and Colin, I’ve learned to never cook a full pack of pasta – we’d never finish it. So I always have little mason jars full of leftover dried pasta around. I boiled up a couple cups of this leftover fusilli spiral pasta in a separate pot, then added it to the soup to make it more hearty.

I served it with some fresh chives on top. And this soup was the perfect lunch for the rainy weekend.  Hope you enjoyed this recipe! <3