Dreamy, Creamy Broccoli Soup

I’ve heard it said that musicians dream in music. It makes perfect sense to me, because my wife, at least sometimes, dreams in recipes.

One day last week, my wife woke up and told me that dinner that night was going to be a low-fat creamy broccoli soup recipe she’d just dreamed. She’s a good cook, particularly with regard to instinct and improvising, and since it was not the first time this recipe-dreaming thing happened it sounded good to me. It wasn’t until dinner that night that I knew just how good, and that, with my wife’s permission, the soup had to be the first (and hopefully not the last) “guest recipe” presented in this space. My only contributions to this were:

• recognizing a delicious soup when I tasted it;

• taking a picture; and

• perhaps most difficult of all, putting my cook’s ego aside and letting someone else contribute.

So here it is, Emily’s Dreamy Creamy Broccoli Soup. (This recipe makes about 4 servings.)

In a large, deep skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter substitute. Add 1 large chopped onion and 8 ounces of sliced, fresh mushrooms. When the onions and mushrooms are cooked through, push them aside in the skillet.

Melt another 2 tablespoons of butter substitute in the skillet, and mix in 2 tablespoons of flour, cooking until a roux forms (about 1 minute). Once the roux forms, push the onions and mushrooms into it, add 2 cups of fat-free chicken broth and 2 cups of skim milk, and mix. Simmer until thickened. Add salt and garlic powder to taste.

Add a 16 ounce bag of frozen broccoli and about 1 tablespoon of dried oregano, and simmer until the broccoli is cooked through.

Ladle about half the vegetables into a bowl, leaving the other half in the roux. Puree the vegetables removed in a blender, then add the pureed vegetables back into the roux.

In a separate pan, sauté about a dozen shrimp in garlic powder until done. Dish up the soup, lay three shrimp in each bowl as a garnish (carefully so they don’t sink), and serve with a nice crusty bread.

If you’d like a cookbook-style version of this recipe for your notebook, just let me know and I’ll send it along.

Hope you enjoy this delicious soup, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week. Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Pleasant dreams!