A Monday Recipe: Cream of Spinach Soup

A desperate attempt to find something my poor sick tummy can eat and feeling a bit of panic about the produce that needed to be used up RIGHT AWAY, I put together this yummy soup! I hope you love it!


Here's what I had: a bit of yellow onion, a bit of red, one green onion and some minced garlic (always have this) , half a bag of baby spinach, a bunch of regular spinach, and some half and half. I always have spices and some kind of broth (homemade, powder, cubes...whatever)




Recipe
2T olive oil
1/2 onion, finely chopped (or, in my case, a mixed equivalent)
1T minced garlic
3 c chopped fresh spinach
4c broth (I used vegetable)
1c half and half
thyme, salt and pepper, to taste.


Finely chop the onions and garlic in the food processor bowl.

I like to get mine pretty finely chopped.

Wash the spinach. My washing method is to fill a HUGE bowl with water. I cut the hard stems off while it's still in a bunch, then put all in the water. Swish around VERY vigorously for a few minutes.

Move the spinach by hand to a colander. Don't dump it into the colander or all the dirt will go with it. Leave the dirt in the bowl!!

Look at all that! this time, there wasn't a whole lot of dirt, but sometimes, wow, it looks like a mud pie! If it's super dirty,  I would do this twice. 

 Rinse the spinach again, and chop finely. Set aside.

Add oil to a heavy pot and heat on medium-high, then add the onion/garlic mixture. I do like my pan to roast a bit. ;) Cook 2 minutes.

 Add the spinach and stir thoroughly to distribute the onion/garlic mixture.

The moisture in and on the spinach will deglaze the pan.

Add your broth. Take a big sniff and notice the raw onion smell. You won't be able to smell much other than the onion, which is how you know it's not cooked enough.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer about 15 minutes. 

Using your okra frying spoon (what? you don't have one? what kind of Texan are you? use a regular slotted spoon. ) to dip a little more than half of the spinach from the soup and transfer to the food processor bowl.

Add 1/2c of the half and half to the bowl, and puree until the spinach is super smooth. NOTE: if you want the soup TOTALLY smooth, move this mixture to a bowl then puree the rest in the same manner, or use an immersion blender in your pot.  Take a big sniff of this here, and notice the difference between now and when you had just added broth.  Pour this back into the pot with the remainder of the soup, and add the rest of the cream. Taste and season. Heat thoroughly, but do not boil.

Serve hot with your favorite bread! Yummy!

We had fresh hot bread, Aldous' and William's favorite!

And, because I the green soup wasn't enough, I made green yogurt for the kids.

Have a souper day!! (get it?)