Creamy Cauliflower Soup

(The New Laurel’s Kitchen)

Why am I making soup in the middle of summer, you ask? Well, remarkably, it hasn’t been that hot for some reason, but mainly, I needed a quick way to use the cauliflower and broccoli we had.

This was the perfect antidote to a post-birthday-party weekend. Leo’s skeleton pirate birthday party at the beach included a feast of Subway sandwiches, pasta salad, rice salad, potato chips and Cheetos. It left me craving heaping servings of veggies. So anyway, I threw in broccoli as well, and it turned out great. It’s mild, but I added curry powder to mine (no one else wanted to though), which gave it added oomph.

And the creamy-ness came from potatoes, not cream.

Pasta Casserole

(Cooks.com)

Back to all things cheesy, I couldn’t resist trying this pasta casserole recipe when delivering meals to our new mom-of-twins friend (she’s by no means a new mom- she has two young children as well :O). I would have made the homemade macaroni & cheese recipe that I’ve made before (don’t be shocked- I have been known to follow the occasional recipe every once and again), from the well-worn recipe clip taped inside our Great Meals on a Tight Budget (Family Circle Cookbook), which is the best mac&cheese ever - and sadly we don’t know who created that recipe- but it was a hot day and I just didn’t have it in me to go whole hog. So, though it’s the first time we’ve ever bought a can of Cheddar Cheese Soup, the Pasta Casserole recipe called for it and I just decided What the heck? Why not try it, it’s not like we ladle Cheddar Cheese Soup over our salads every day- it can’t be that bad to throw it into a recipe once in a howling moon.

Instead of tomato juice, I used a can of tomatoes. I used our swanky new Toastmaster stick blender to smooth the tomatoes into the sauce. (I should say the stick blender is new to us- from Jen’s garage sale; we love this thing!) End result: tasty! The tomates and the soup give it a bit of an odd pink color before it’s baked, but after baking it’s beautifully golden with those irresistible crisp noodle tops. I do prefer the homemade mac & cheese, but in a pinch this is good.

The reason I was in a bit of a hurry to make room in our refrigerator is that we’re picking up our first box of produce from Garden of Eden Organics’ Community Supported Agriculture this Thursday. We’re excited!