Cream of Cauliflower Soup Recipe


Sometimes a warm, smooth vegetable soup, something soothing, yet alkalyzing, and that requires no chewing, is what a person needs to eat, for example, after having dental surgery.

That was how this recipe came together. Joe had an emergency tooth extraction, the dentist recommended a diet of liquid or soft foods for at least two days, these ingredients were in the refrigerator when we got home, and I improvised with them.

Joe enjoyed the soup so much that he requested it again less than a week later, even though his mouth had pretty much healed. This time I wrote down the recipe and photographed the steps.

Ingredients:

4 cups organically grown vegetable broth (homemade or storebought)
2 medium-sized organically grown potatoes
1 large (or two medium-sized) organically grown yellow zucchini squash
1/2 large organically grown yellow onion
1/2 large organically grown white cauliflower
1/2 cup shedded organically grown white cabbage
Purified water to add as needed to the broth before cooking

Pour the organic vegetable broth (or stock) into the cooking pot.

Peel the potatoes.

Slice and dice the potatoes.


Slice and dice the onion.




Add the potato and onion pieces to the broth.

Cut the ends off the zucchini, and slice and dice the narrow neck.


Slice and dice the wider part of the zucchini.

Use the vegetable peeler to remove any discolored areas from the cauliflower.


With a sharp knife, remove the stem and leaves from the under side of the cauliflower.


With the sharp knife, cut off the large outer branches of the cauliflower.


From each of the outer branches of the cauliflower, pull apart the flowers and dice the stems.


Add the cauliflowerlets, diced stems, and diced yellow zucchini to the broth.


Slice and dice the white cabbage.

Add cabbage to broth and enough purified water so that broth reaches 1 1/2 inches below the top of the vegetables, which will supply more water to the soup as it cooks. Bring the mixture to a boil (about 10 to 12 minutes), and then turn the heat down to the lowest level at which it sustains a low boil. Simmer until the vegeables are soft (about 35 minutes).

Move the soup into a food processor.


If the amount of soup exceeds the liquid capacity of the food processor, process it in two batches.


Reheat the cream of cauliflower soup over the lowest flame before serving.

Optional seasonings to offer once the soup is served in bowls:

Himalayan pink salt, organic black pepper, flake-type nutritional yeast, organic extra virgin olive oil, organic garlic powder, organic savory herbs (sometimes called poultry seasoning).

If you wish to add a spoonful of white or yellow miso to your bowl of soup, first dilute the miso by stirring it into a half cup of soup with a fork or chopsticks in a mug or small bowl before adding it to the bowl of soup.

Of course, crackers of all kinds make a good foil for soup. We tend to favor puffed organic brown rice cakes at our house.

Turns out it’s delicious as a cold summer soup, too.

Three weeks later: I required a tooth extraction, too! After a day of ice packs and napping, I woke up the next day with a lot less pain, and hungry, so I made this creamy soup. This time I had some carrots on hand, so added a couple of small ones to the mix of vegetables and got a golden yellow soup with a slighty richer taste.

Umami Tofu Paté



Umami means “delicious savory taste” in Japanese, a taste characteristic of meat broths, dried shiitake mushrooms, fermented soy products, kombu seaweed, cheeses, and fermented or dried seafood. 

This vegan recipe’s umami tastes are imparted by flake-type nutritional yeast and white miso paste.  I can whip up a serving of it in less than five minutes, so it has become my go-to quick high protein dish when I don’t have time to cook.  I often serve it with sliced cucumbers, celery stalks, brown rice crackers, or toasted nori seaweed – or all of them!

Ingredients:

Organic tofu*
Organic white miso*
Organic nutritional yeast
Organic extra virgin olive oil

*Tofu and miso made from organically grown soybeans are crucial to this recipe.  I don’t want to poison myself with the carcinogenic herbicide glyphosate, with which genetically modified [GMO] soy beans are grown.  Virtually all soybeans, unless they are specifically grown by organic farming methods and marked so on their packaging, have been grown with glyphosate.

For each serving, I mash with a fork, a 2-inch slice of organic tofu (neither soft or hard, but somewhere between them, creating a texture like cottage cheese), and then blend in with the same fork one or two tablespoons of organic white miso (less to limit your salt intake).

Then I pour on a tablespoon (or more if desired) of organic flake-type nutritional yeast and a tablespoon (or more if desired) of organic extra virgin olive oil, and continue mixing with the fork until all is well blended.

Gluten-free Maple Nut Muffins (Re-purposing Leftover Gluten-free Baked Goods)

Preheat the over to 380 F.

Line muffin pan with unbleached paper muffin cups (or make muffin cups from squares of unbleached oven parchment paper)

Break leftover gluten-free baked goods into pieces, tossing them into the bowl of a food processor. I used cinnamon-raisin bread to make these muffins tonight, but any sweet (as opposed to savory) flavored bread, roll, cake, cookie or pastry (or a combination) would work as well. Use the food processor to reduce the baked goods to crumbs.

For every cup of crumbs, add:

A beaten organic pasture-raised egg (this gives batter the same expanding flexible structure while baking that gluten does)

1 or more tablespoons of maple syrup (less sweetener needed if the crumbs contains cookies or pastries)

¼ cup of raw organically grown walnuts or pecans, pulverized in the food processor
1 tablespoon of organic virgin coconut oil

Optional: ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon (if you are using cinnamon raisin bread crumbs, you don’t need it)

¼ cup pure water (the amount depends on the inherent moisture of the ingredients. Just add a teaspoon at a time while blending, until the batter is thicker than pancake batter, but more liquid than cookie dough)

Once you have a thick batter, stop the food processor, and stir some organically grown raisins and dried cranberries into the batter.

Spoon the batter into muffin cups, filling them about 9/10 full. They will rise, but not a lot.

Bake about 20 minutes (the sides and tops should brown a little bit).

Leave the muffins in the muffin tin until cool enough to handle, then move them to a rack to cool completely – or, serve them warm.