Quick and easy soup that has all the flavors of lasagna, but instead of tediously making a layered casserole, it’s combined into a soup. I cooked the noodles separately rather than cooking them IN the soup as the original recipe suggested. If you do cook them in the soup, it’s a one-pot soup dinner.

Two soups in a row . . . sorry about that, but couldn’t wait to share this recipe with you. You may have seen it on pinterest (I think that’s where I found it first) but then clicked through to find the recipe and blog at CarlsbadCravings.com. I just about never make lasagna anymore – sometimes because of the work, sometimes because it’s so carb-centric. But in this recipe, I could control the carbs (used much less lasagna noodles) but it still had all the fabulous flavors of traditional lasagna.

A good friend was visiting me – Lynn’s wife Sue was enjoying an Hawaiian holiday with a girlfriend, so Lynn flew to SoCal and stayed with me as he visited people all over the area (hey used to live here). Lynn also was SO very gracious to take care of a bunch of honey-do items for me. He was a whirlwind of busy-ness during his stay and got all the jobs done! I owe him many thanks! I’ve visited them in Colorado a couple of times, and there are Sue-recipes here on my blog, as she’s a really good cook.

Anyway, since Lynn was here, I decided to invite some mutual friends, 3 widowers, actually, (we all know each other from our church choir) for dinner. I knew they’d enjoy seeing Lynn and visiting. I knew all of their wives well, and all of us (except Lynn) commiserate about being widow(er)s. Anyway, I thought this sounded like a good dinner option for the evening, and oh, was it ever.

Since I doubled the recipe, it wouldn’t fit in my instant pot – so I made it in my big slow cooker. I cooked the pasta separately just before serving. If you’re going to eat all the soup at the first sitting, you can cook the noodles in the soup (and might have to add a bit more chicken broth to the mixture), but if leftovers are in the plan, cook the noodles separately so they don’t get mushy when the soup is reheated.

As it happened, I didn’t have any Italian sausage, so I substituted ground pork and added the seasonings that are used for Italian sausage (specifically fennel). The original recipe called for ground beef, but you could likely use ground turkey too or a mixture. The onion and meat are cooked through, then you begin adding ingredients. That’s the beauty of this dish – once the onion and meat are cooked, you just pile in all the stuff (herbs and spices, garlic, marinara sauce [or your choice of spaghetti sauce], tomatoes, tomato paste, a dash of balsamic, a dash of sugar [to counteract the acidity of all the tomato products], some cream at the end, and then the pasta is added.

A bunch of toppings are prepared – I used shredded Mozzarella, Pecorino-Romano, Italian parsley, fresh sliced basil and a good spoonful of whole milk ricotta cheese. I served the soup in the kitchen and each person added what they wanted of the toppings. Two of the fellows went back for seconds, and we had enough for another dinner for two.

What’s GOOD: the flavor is just super. So very easy to make. Quick! Tastes just like lasagna. I liked everything about it, and will definitely be making it again. I’d double it again, and freeze half, but wouldn’t add the cream to it to freeze.

What’s NOT: can’t think of a thing.

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Don’t we all like EASY now and then? Me, too. And this soup met all the criteria for ease and for taste.

Sometimes when the word “easy” is used in recipe descriptions, I’m leery – too easy and a dish won’t have much taste. With soup, you want layers of flavor and texture. Something about this recipe got me interested, and I thought it could be done in the Instant Pot. I didn’t end up doing that – only because I spent a week in Palm Desert last month and I didn’t feel like lugging the IP in my car. As it was, it makes itself just fine in a regular pot/pan, and indeed, it was quick, but also super-tasty.

All of you who read my blog know that I so believe in Penzey’s chicken stock base, and I did take THAT to Palm Desert, so I can perhaps attribute some of the fine flavor to that.

My friend Ann (who lives in Idaho) flew down for us to enjoy the warmth in Palm Desert (it was in the 80s every day we were there), and I made this one night with the remains of a rotisserie chicken. It was perfect for that, as it calls for 2 cups of left over chicken. The recipe makes plenty – enough for Ann and me to have dinner twice, and a lunch once, and there was still enough that once home I had enough for another dinner and lunch. I could have frozen it, but I didn’t mind having it that many days. It tasted just as good 6 days later as it did the first night – and maybe even better. I may not have put all the rice in – I thought the soup was already carb-centric enough with the corn, so I skimped a bit, but I enjoyed the bit of rice.

There’s not all that much to making it – onion, oil, oregano, canned tomatoes (diced), frozen corn, a little bit of rice, the chicken, good broth, and then all the fun toppings – fresh cilantro, sour cream, shredded cheese and a lime wedge. We bought a package of small (street taco size) flour tortillas, and enjoyed those alongside the soup. Sublime. The recipe came from Simply Recipes.

What’s GOOD: if the flavor wasn’t there, it would’t be here on my blog. It was very flavorful, and I loved all the varied textures (tomatoes, corn, rice, then the toppings). And for sure, it was EASY! And I mean that. It couldn’t have taken me more than 30 minutes to start and finish. That makes it a winner.

What’s NOT: uhm, nothing that I can think of.

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Oh – My – Goodness! This soup is just off the charts. When I tell you you need to make this, do you trust me on that?

My friend Cherrie made this soup and brought it to our Christmas cookie baking day a few weeks ago. She said she’d really wanted to try this recipe, and so she brought a big tub of it. She wouldn’t tell Jackie or me what was in it. Of course, we could see shrimp – big, honkin’ ones, most of them bigger than the soup spoon. We cold see onion, potato, and celery and some bell pepper too. Plus some little bacon pieces. And a really rich, creamy soup to go along with it. She said “there’s no cream in it.” We tried guessing – Half and Half? No. Coconut milk? No. Almond milk? No. Non-Dairy Creamer? No. Evaporated milk? No. Is there dairy in it, I asked? Yes, but not what you’d think. Cheese, I said? Nope.

I almost don’t want to tell you – – – but if I do, I think you’ll stop reading right this minute and never go on. And you’ll never make it because you’ll just say no-no, can’t do that. Too rich. Too fattening.

The soup is SO very easy to make – Cherrie found the recipe at allrecipes.com, and made it mostly according to the recipe, although she added some dried thyme, and she DID thin down the soup part with regular milk because it was too thick, she thought.

So, are you ready to hear the “reveal?” It’s cream cheese. Who’d have ever thought to make soup with cream cheese? And yes, it’s rich. And yes, it’s decadent. And YES, it’s fabulous! Well, why wouldn’t it be with cream cheese in it??

I haven’t made this myself – so I’m giving you the recipe exactly as Cherrie made it – using 2 bricks of cream cheese. But that quantity feeds a lot of people. Probably 8 people as a dinner-sized portion. I had the leftovers twice. It’s very filling. I may make this myself . . . and if I do I’m going to use half the amount of cream cheese and use half and half to fill up the quantity of soup part.

This would make a great New Year’s Eve Dinner. My parents, for over 30 years, got together with another couple to play pinochle on that night of the year (other nights too, but almost always on Dec. 31st), and my Mom would make oyster stew. It was their tradition. The score card for their years and years of playing the game was taped to the bottom of the card table and they’d reminisce about previous games and scores. I’m not a fan of oysters, so I wouldn’t be making that, but this would be a great stand-in.

What’s GOOD: the flavor of this soup is a 10 and or a 100, whatever scale you want to use. Is it rich? Yes. But I’d definitely make this myself, though as I mentioned I’d try using half the cream cheese and adding half and half. Do not boil the soup or it will separate. Am sure this would freeze just fine. Don’t over-cook it, either, because you don’t want to dry out the shrimp.

What’s NOT: well, the fat content is about the only thing! Other than that, it’s so worth making.

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Thrilled with the results of this home made mushroom soup without a speck of cream.

Sometime recently I ordered mushroom soup at a restaurant, and expected it to be a nice little cup with mushrooms swimming in it AND in a creamy broth. Nope. It had no cream in it, and wow, was it good. So I promised myself I’d try to replicate it at home. Couldn’t be that hard, right? I found several recipes, but settled on one from the New York Times, that actually was a pureed soup. That I didn’t want, but I stuck with their recipe for the most part.

The secret to making this is layering lots of flavors – all things complementary to soup, of course. Like shallots, leeks, onions. I bought crimini mushrooms, regular button mushrooms, plus some shiitake. And to help with layering, I used some dried mushrooms. Once I found them at my local market, I had a several choices. Mostly they contained oyster mushrooms and chanterelle. Those were fine – they’re in a tiny little clamshell box. They got soaked in hot water for 30 minutes before I began. Most recipes tell you to use the soaking liquid, but on this little box from Melissa’s Produce, it said NOT to use the water, so I discarded it. Sometimes that mushroom water can taste a little off.

What I have in my refrigerator is a plastic one-pound tub of mushroom concentrate (broth, like chicken broth concentrate). And oh, was it perfect for this. If you can find it in your stores, please use it. Mine is from “Custom Culinary” in Oswego IL. Here’s the link at Amazon for it: Custom Culinary Gold Label Vegan Mushroom Base, 1 Pound. I’ve had mine for at least a year or more and it’s shown no degradation of quality at all.

Chopping up all the fresh mushrooms took awhile, but the 3 different kinds added different texture. One little surprise ingredient is a jot of soy sauce, and I just KNOW it added great flavor. You don’t taste it – there’s not enough in there to do that, but it’s good umami flavor. I simmered the soup for about 45 minutes, cooled it and packaged it up for freezing and left one container for eating. As of tonight, I’ve had it for 3 meals. I just LOVE the flavor of it – love the leeks, the broth, and the tooth of the mushrooms themselves. The original called for a Parmesan rind, but I didn’t bother, although I do have one in my refrigerator. For me, this soup doesn’t need cheese! But a nice piece of toast with some melted Parm on top would be a great little topper for this soup. And, of course, you could drizzle in a little bit of sour cream or cream if you wanted to. I’m amazed at the calorie count (low, really low).

What’s GOOD: for sure the super-over-the-top mushroom flavor. Might be from the mushroom base – don’t know for sure. Love the meatiness of the mushrooms and there were lots in this soup. Freezes well. A keeper.

What’s NOT: you’ll likely have to go shopping for some of the ingredients (leeks, maybe shallots, and the mushroom base, the dried mushrooms and maybe all the varieties of fresh mushrooms too).

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 Lots of flavors going on in this soup and it’s easy to make. The toppings? Chopped peanuts and chopped cilantro plus a drizzle of cream. I’m SO glad I have leftovers.

Back about 9 years ago I posted this soup and hadn’t made it in the interim. I’d attended a birthday party back then, for my friend Cherrie (I think it was when she turned 50) and her friend Robin (the hostess) served the previous version of this soup. There was no particular reason that I forgot about it – except that when you run a food blog, as I’ve mentioned here before, you always need to be trying NEW soups, not old ones. However, I was entertaining a group of women for an event at my house (10 of us) and didn’t want risk to be a factor – I needed a tried and true recipe. I did make a few changes to the soup, though, so it is slightly different than the old recipe. The friends came to watch a movie (A Man Called Ove) and to have lunch and dessert.

The soup – – it starts out with sweet potatoes. You could use either kind (yellow or orange) but I chose the orange because of color only. The potatoes are coated in peanut oil and roasted. The original recipe called for a boat load of oven-roasted Roma tomatoes – I decided to change that – I used San Marzano canned tomatoes which should be just as good. There’s onion, garlic, curry powder and cayenne in it too, plus chicken broth and coconut milk. And chicken pieces, and peanut butter (a lot, actually, but this recipe makes a lot of soup) plus the toppings. I wanted to have a bit more texture to the soup (because you blend the soup to smooth without the chicken). So, I bought a pound of butternut squash and roasted it in the oven, even broiled them at the last minute to get some lovely caramelization on them, chopped them up and those are kind of hidden underneath the little pile of nuts and cilantro in the picture.

As with most soups, they’re so much better the next day, so I did that and merely had to re-heat the soup and prepare the toppings and I was ready to serve it to my friends. The drizzle of cream wasn’t in the original (you could use a drizzle of coconut milk if you wanted to be more authentic). You don’t taste the peanut butter, which is surprising since there was 3/4 cup of it in the soup. I’ve added my new photo to the old post since the photo I had before wasn’t all that great. Boy, I’ve come a long way taking photos for my blog!

What’s GOOD: uhmmmm, this soup is so delish. Love the smooth texture, but also the toppings – the crunch of the peanuts particularly. You could easily make this vegetarian if you want to, by using vegetable broth and no chicken. The soup itself is thick (hearty). You could try different toppings if you prefer to. Freezes well.

What’s NOT: there are a variety of steps to make this – roasting the sweet potatoes and the butternut squash (ideally do those at the same time, or use only sweet potatoes and no butternut squash). I have a good Vitamix blender which did a really good job of smoothing out the soup, but you could use an immersion blender too.

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Do you like Thai food? I sure do, yet I don’t have it often. There’s a tiny hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant near me that serves very authentic (I think) Thai food with whatever degree of heat you can handle.

In this little Thai restaurant the husband works the front, and the wife does a lot of the cooking. I need to go there more often. I love their Pad Thai, probably the most common American Thai restaurant specialty. Lots of carbs, however.

So, I digress . . . I had decided to make some more yellow squash (cold) soup, and when I began I wanted to use up some fresh ginger I had, semi-withering in a kitchen counter bowl. With that, my mind turned to the Thai green curry paste I have in my refrigerator. Love the flavor it adds to things. So rather than repeat what I’d made before, I decided to make this version a little Asian. A little Thai.

The soup was so easy to make – onion in oil, added the squash, some garlic, Thai green curry paste, the fresh ginger, then some chicken broth (or you could use coconut milk) and I let it simmer for about 20 minutes until the squash was super-tender. Cooled it on my countertop for a little bit, then whizzed it up in my Vitamix blender until smooth. I added in some salt, pepper, lemon juice and sour cream. That was chilled down overnight and as I’m writing this I had it for my lunch today, that little bowl up top. Actually I had 2 bowls of it. It was so refreshing for a hot summer day. It’s still summer where I live in SoCalifornia.

You could use any kind of garnishes – cilantro is a must, however, then you could add toasted sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds. Or no seeds at all. Whatever floats your boat. The sour cream adds a lovely silkiness to the soup. You could add milk, or soy milk instead. Or some Greek yogurt too. Any of the above. This soup is versatile. I like just a little bit of texture to the soup, but not much. Use your own judgment about that too. If you’d like to, cut off the stems of the cilantro and add those into the soup at the beginning. It will add flavor without the green from the leaves. I didn’t think of it, or I would have! Altogether lovely soup. The curry paste doesn’t add enough flavor that you can distinguish curry (honest) and the ginger adds just a tiny bit of flavor AND a tiny bit of heat. Or maybe the heat was from the green curry paste. I’m not sure. Altogether good, though.

What’s GOOD: this soup is so easy to make, though it’s best if it’s refrigerated overnight. It will meld the flavors and get it plenty cold. Use your own choice of garnishes. This is not a thick, heavy soup at all – probably wouldn’t satisfy for a dinner, but it was fine for my lunch with a cookie afterwards. Low calorie, even with the sour cream. This soup isn’t going to knock your socks off with flavor – by that I mean the soup is subtle, mild, as you’d expect using yellow squash.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. You could serve this warm, but if you do, make sure you do NOT bring the soup to a boil – the sour cream will separate and make the soup curdle. Not attractive!

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Just plain vegetable soup, but all green, and with a modicum of Italian seasonings. And good Parmigiano cheese on top.

When I got home from my road trip a week ago, I didn’t crave salads (my usual lament) because I’d had lots of salads on the trip. What I craved was soup. And vegetables. Eating out almost 3 meals a day (a couple of times Cherrie and I had an ice cream cone for lunch when we’d had an ample breakfast) you learn soon enough that most restaurants don’t serve vegetables. A few here and there, but mostly restaurants serve carbs along with protein. We ordered a side veg a couple of times (to share) and often Cherrie and I shared an entire meal (a salad and entrée both) which worked really well. We enjoyed dessert just a couple of times, aside from the aforementioned ice cream cone treat we had twice.

So, once home, a trip to the store gave me all the makings of a green minestrone, a soup I’ve been wanting to make forever.

This soup – I had it once, in northern Italy, at least 25 years ago. I’d gotten a bout of food poisoning, actually, and was really quite sick (from some fresh mozzarella at a roadside diner). I visited a pharmacy and they’d given me something which helped, but they confirmed my food poisoning diagnosis and suggested it would take about 2 weeks to work itself through. About 10 days later, we got to Northern Italy, and I finally thought I could tolerate some soup, and the waiter suggested their green minestrone. Oh my, was it ever delicious. Except for 7-up, toast and yogurt, I’d hardly eaten a thing, so maybe it was my frame of mind, or just that I was feeling slightly better. That soup – that glorious fresh green taste – has stayed with me all these years. I’d researched green minestrone recipes some years back and found a couple, and just hadn’t gotten around to trying either of them. Until now.

As is usually the case, when I start making soup, I improvise. I used the recipe only as a guide to add my vegetables of choice. Maybe this soup should be titled Green and White Minestrone, because there are lots of white ingredients in it (onion, nearly white carrots, fennel and the mostly white leeks).

One thing that’s unique in this recipe is the addition of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese rinds. You save those, don’t you? I have about 2 years’ worth of them in my cheese bin (probably better to freeze them, but I might never find them again if I did that), and two of them went into this soup. Once they’ve expended their lovely essence to the soup, you scoop them out and throw them away.

I tried to time the vegetables so they’d all be perfectly cooked through (barely). Generally it worked – if you are so inclined, remove the vegetables when they’re nearly done, then add the others, until you have everything to the perfect point of done-ness, then add them back in just long enough to warm through. There’s a little bit of pasta in this soup – you can add however much you’d like. I guessed mostly at the quantities of each item. I like the frozen peas to be bright green – they add a nice fillip to the top of the soup – I always add them almost like a garnish. If you rinse them under the hot water tap, they’ll all defrost and be warmed through.

Once you’ve scooped portions into bowls, add the hot peas, the minced parsley, the grated cheese, and lastly a little drizzle of EVOO. Perfecto!

What’s GOOD: well, if the flavor wasn’t good, I wouldn’t be posting it – I loved all the green veggies, and the broth was extra special because of the Parmesan rinds in it. Just remember – a vegetable-laden soup will be only as good as the broth you cook it in. I use Penzey’s chicken broth concentrate, which I think has tons of good flavor. Altogether good soup. Even though it’s still like summer here in SoCal, I gulped down the hot soup and savored every bite. I love the toppings too.

What’s NOT: hmmm. Lots of chopping and mincing, I suppose, but get someone to help and it’ll be done in no time.

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Uh, huh! More chilled soups in my repertoire. This one using yellow squash and chicken broth. With so few ingredients I was amazed at how flavorful it was.

My new favorite thing – chilled soups from easily accessible summer produce. As I write this I’m still finishing up eating a batch of chilled zucchini soup (my second batch in recent weeks). In the interim I attended a kind of a cooking class (sans recipes, what’s up with that?) where they made a raw cucumber soup. I’m not quite so fond of that kind (raw) – I prefer the cooked one.

This soup, though, came from a class taught by Susan Vollmer, who used to own a cookware store here in my county, but she closed it down (mostly, she says, because Amazon cut into her business too much) and is retired. But occasionally she gives a class in her home. It was a very warm day, and Susan was in and out of her kitchen door many times tending the barbecue, but first she showed us how she made this soup and then gave all of us a bowl. I have all the ingredients in my refrigerator as I write this, to make a batch.

It’s a very simple recipe, and yet it has plenty of flavor. Perhaps it depends on what kind of chicken broth you use – the more flavorful – the better the soup. Yellow squash doesn’t have a ton a flavor (does zucchini have a little more flavor? I don’t know . . . just wondering) so you need the other ingredients (chives, chicken broth, sour cream) to have enough. I don’t mean to sound “down” on this soup – I actually liked it a lot, and I love yellow squash. Someone mentioned in the class – have you noticed that you no longer see the crookneck – apparently the growers have bred that aspect out of it – now you see both zucchini and yellow squash lined up like soldiers. Usually next to each other.

So, this soup – yellow squash and white onion cooked together in some olive oil, then the chicken broth is added and the mixture is cooked for a brief time – it doesn’t take squash long to cook anyway. Susan had made the soup ahead of time and had used her immersion blender to puree it. She prefers it just slightly chunky, so the immersion blender did a fine job of it. Then she added lemon juice (plus more later on when she tasted it), sour cream, salt and pepper. It was chilled down for several hours (OR, you can eat it hot) and served with a little dollop of sour cream and more bright green chives on top. I slicked the bowl clean.

What’s GOOD: the overall taste is lovely – good for summer, or good even in the winter, served hot. The toppings kind of make the dish, and the lemon juice is an important aspect of the flavor profile. Be sure to use enough. Keeps for about a week, too, and it should freeze just fine. For me, a 2-cup portion makes a really nice lunch (it’s very low in calorie, too).

What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of.

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Refreshing. Filling. Elusive flavors. Piquant. Worth making.

This soup has a story. (Of course, nearly all my recipes have some kind of back story.) Some years ago my DH and I took a trip to the northeast during fall leaf season. Sadly, we didn’t see many leaves as one of the hurricanes  slowed itself down through the entire northeastern states. In fact, the area was still having some rain and winds when we were there. We darted here and there in Western Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, in search of scenic roads where we hoped the winds hadn’t denuded the trees. Alas, we found very few leaves remaining on any of the trees. Don’t you just hate it when you make a special trip for something (fall leaves) and there aren’t any? I’d plotted the trip before we left, and we overnighted in Shelburne, Vermont. The B&B owner suggested a restaurant within walking distance of the hotel, The Bearded Frog. It was still cold and windy that night, so we trotted across to the restaurant and were glad for a warm, cozy table inside.

Our waitress greeted us with menus and mentioned the specials, which included a cold soup that the chef had just made (with the last of summer corn). The waitress raved about it, so I had to order some. I swooned over it, and eventually cornered the waitress again to ask if she knew what was IN the soup. She got a quizzical look on her face and said “I’ll find out.” Some time later she appeared with a piece of paper with the ingredients. Just the ingredients, but not any quantities. When I got home, I made it and knew I hadn’t quite gotten it right. Then I forgot about it.

So, here I am, many years later, during a very hot summer in Southern California, and I’ve been overdosing on cold soups. I can’t seem to get enough of them. As I write this, my friend Kit gave me a gigantic zucchini that’s sitting on my kitchen counter waiting to be made into another batch of Chilled Zucchini-Mint Soup. I’ll probably freeze some of this batch, as it’s a HUGE zucchini.

Anyway, I began searching through my soup recipes for more cold soups and ran across this one, that I’d never really tweaked correctly since I wasn’t sure of quantities. I had some notes I’d made, and had changed some of the quantities last time too. This time I didn’t have any canned creamed corn, so I just substituted more frozen corn for that part. Canned creamed corn doesn’t have any cream or dairy in it, it’s just cooked and processed to look like it does. I’ve included it in the below recipe because I think it’s a nice addition – but if you don’t have it, just use more frozen or fresh corn. I am good about figuring out (sometimes) what’s in a sauce or a dish when I eat at a restaurant, but I just couldn’t pinpoint ingredients in this soup, so I was so happy when the waitress was able to give me the ingredient list.

The chef never said she had cooked the onion, but raw onion in a cold soup has a bit of a bite, so I decided to cook the onion first. Everything else in the soup is raw. It takes a day for the flavors to meld, so do make it ahead – at least 8 hours or so, or preferably the day before you wish to serve it. It will keep for about a week. I haven’t tried to freeze it, but likely it would be fine. Do read my notes in the recipe about the pureeing of it – whether to strain or not. I didn’t because I was fine with including all that corn fiber in my servings. I used white corn, so the color of the soup is more off white than yellow. At the restaurant, way back, it was definitely yellow, so the chef had obviously used yellow corn. Your choice.

What’s GOOD: good, wholesome corn flavor, and if you don’t strain it, it has nice toothsome chewing, sort of. I loved the elusive flavors in this – there IS some heat from the jalapeno and ginger. It’s refreshing for sure. Easy. Altogether delicious, I think. It looks pretty too, if you use the garnishes. The chef had added lima beans. I didn’t have any of those, so didn’t use them.

What’s NOT: nothing, really. A lot of ingredients to gather up, but once in the blender, it’s pretty darned easy to make.

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Oh my goodness. This. Soup. Is. So. Good. And healthy.

Yes, I know, it’s not hot soup weather. But as a food blogger, sometimes we have to take inspiration when it comes, and this one required me to act on it immediately. My decorator, Darci, has been working with me for well over 20 years. Maybe 25, actually. We’ve become friends, although she’s young enough to be my daughter. The other day I offered to go to her house to see some fabric for drapes, since she’s got a pesky, painful ankle. I took along a little portion of the Cantaloupe Gazpacho for her to taste. After that, she brought out her latest obsession. This soup. I was in heaven it was so gosh darned good.

The recipe is her own concoction – she must have had spinach, broccoli and cilantro in the refrigerator that day, and she’s become a convert to the wisdom of using bone broth instead of regular broth. She buys it at Sprouts (this soup uses beef bone broth) and likes it because each cup contains 9 grams of protein. She rattled off how she made it. The next morning I shopped for the ingredients, came home and made it immediately, even in our summer heat. It also has curry powder AND Thai green curry paste in it. That’s what gives it some zing. Coconut milk gives it a more subtle flavor.

On top of the soup you add 3 things: (1) a drizzle of good EVOO; (2) a drizzle of fresh lemon juice; and (3) a little sprinkle of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I added the cilantro leaf when I made it, but that’s just for fun. If you don’t like cilantro, you won’t like this soup – but I suppose you could make it without the cilantro.

It takes little time to make the soup – and once the vegetables are cooked, you puree it in the blender then cook down the soup a little bit to make it thicker. I made a double batch and will be freezing at least 2 big bags of it for another day. And I have enough for a couple of dinners AND a bag to give to a good friend.

Earmark this recipe, or at least print it out so you can make it once it’s cool enough to do so. I know I’ll be making this over and over. It’s addictive. Honest. And thanks, Darci, for sharing the recipe and saying “yes” to putting it on my blog!

What’s GOOD: it’s silky smooth and full of bright, citrusy flavors (from the cilantro and the lemon juice). It’s healthy. Really healthy. But you’d never know it. If you want to cut corners, don’t put hardly any cheese on top, and do a little bitty drizzle of EVOO. It’s very low calorie. Last night I served myself one bowl (about a cup), but just had to go back for more. Just know, I told you it’s addictive. Maybe that’s a negative (ha)!

What’s NOT: nothing really, except maybe finding bone broth. Everything else in it is easy enough.
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