I work at the local pizza restaurant during the lunch hour when we usually stay busy serving pizza by the slice, breadsticks, sandwiches, wraps, fajitos, and on Fridays, enchiladas.

This winter, soup was added to the menu. My co-worker is a marvelous cook and prepares these soups a couple times each week, varying between potato soup, chicken noodle, pizza soup, and broccoli soup. Unfortunately none of these soups are intended to be vegetarian so I don’t eat them.

A few weeks ago I took her broccoli soup recipe home and adapted it to my vegetarian diet. I still use milk products so I added whole milk to my soup; if you’re vegan, you can eliminate that and substitute water or broth instead. (Yes, more adaptions, but I’m sure you can handle it.)

Here’s my version of our Broccoli Cream Soup without the chicken broth!

In a large soup pan heat three cups of water while you’re chopping veggies.

Chop one cup of carrots and toss them in the water.
Then chop one cup of celery. Toss it in.
Next, the broccoli. You’ll need four cups of that. Toss it in and let it boil for about three minutes.

Hint: chop the carrots and celery in small pieces, not large chunks.

Next you’re going to drain the water from the veggies. But save the broth! I put the broth back into my four-cup pyrex measuring cup and put the veggies in my strainer which sits in the sink until I need them again.

The next thing you’ll need is an onion. Chop about 3/4 of a cup of onion and put it into the large soup pan with six tablespoons of butter. Heat the onions, stirring, stirring, until they are tender.

Add six tablespoons of flour, and stir until creamy. Work it all in.

Now gently and slowly, add back in your three cups of vegetable broth, stirring it into the floury onion-butter mixture so that everything is even and not lumpy.

Next add two cups of milk if you use milk. If not, stir in two cups of water.

Heat it up! You need for this to boil for at least a minute, and if you’re using milk, you’d better stir constantly.

Next add back in your veggies (remember, the ones you boiled earlier?)

To this mixture add one tablespoon parsley, one and a half teaspoons of salt, and half a teaspoon of garlic powder.

Simmer covered for 35 to 40 minutes.

Serve with warm tortillas, quesadillas, buttered french bread, or whatever you have that sounds and tastes good to you!

We get about four servings out of this soup.