Vegetable Oneness Creamy Soup

Today time was limited: a routine visit to the dentist, while I tried to update my hygienist on all the new wonderful things in my life, talking around the cleaning process. It always makes me prioritize what I say. I also had a meeting at work at 2 PM so I needed to leave for work 30 minutes early. Generally, before I changed my diet, I would have gone out to eat somewhere in the neighborhood after my appointment. This time, I went home to cook.

What a novelty.

I decided to finally try out my new food processor [never had one before, other than my set of knives] and made a cream of vegetable soup. First I pureed about 2 cups of leftover cooked brown rice; meanwhile I quickly boiled some beet greens and pureed them, and halved a small acorn squash which I steamed ten minutes in the microwave.

I pureed and added a carton [about a cup?] of Mori Nu soft tofu for creaminess and protein and calcium; then pureed the acorn squash. I added some plain Silk soymilk to this mixture to adjust the thickness of the soup while it cooked and the flavors blended together. Red lentils could have been cooked, pureed, and added to this, also. I gave my husband the squash skin to eat as an appetizer. He loves them.

I added my usual seasonings: ground cumin, coriander, dill, basil, oregano; and added onion and garlic powder as I hadn't taken time to chop onion or grate fresh garlic. I found that, maybe because the starch of the rice absorbs more flavor, I should have increased the usual amounts of seasonings versus what would be used in a thin soup. At the last I stirred in a bag of fresh spinach leaves. My daughter proclaimed it rich and good; my husband asked for toasted bread, and reluctantly allowed that the seasoning could have been more intense, as mentioned above. Salting to taste brought it more to life, also.

While the soup was preparing, I tried out something new. Instead of throwing out the acorn squash seeds, I cleaned them by rinsing in a colander, patted dry and toasted under the broiler for about ten minutes, then lightly salted them. These made a delicious snack. They can either be eaten whole, or opened and eaten like sunflower seeds. The shells and insides are both rather delicate.

Yum, and off I went to work.