Cauliflower Soup

What with the temperatures in Chattanooga being freakish and unbearable the past couple days (22 but it feels like 12? No thanks!) and my stress level running proportionally opposite to the temperature, I needed a good winter soup to warm me up and calm me down.

Fortunately, I ran across this awesome recipe in this magazine (I think, it was on Dear Boyfriend's nigh-sister-in-law's counter top, and I didn't pay much attention to the title) and scribbled down the ingredients. I rarely follow a recipe very closely. I am a Southern girl and think that measuring cups in the kitchen are about as useful as shoes in the summer time.

So I simply heated up as much water as looked like it would be a good batch of soup, and through in enough chicken bullion to make some tasty broth. A whole head of cauliflower got chopped into tiny pieces in my food processor and chucked into the soup. A single granny smith apple followed suit, as did some carrots I found in the fridge. The original recipe didn't call for carrots, but I love how they add color and sweetness to most soups. I threw in garlic pepper, regular pepper, Italian seasoning and the barest dash of curry powder. Let it simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour and then ran it through a blender to get a creamy, thick porridge consistency.

It was divine on a cold February night, completely vegan, and met Dear Boyfriend's seal of approval. This later item is truly high accolades-- Dear Boyfriend usually lacks fondness for my vegetarian and vegan dishes because they aren't rich or flavorful enough. In my defense, I personally like to let the vegetables speak for themselves quite a bit in cooking, and admittedly often confuse spicing for flavor with spicing for insane cajun heat. But this soup turned out flavorful without being spicy and tasty even to a picky carnivore. Go grab a cauliflower before it warms up around here and get cooking!