Organic Carrot Soup

** just so you know, I apparently typed this all up on April 15 and then somehow didn't hit the "publish" button. My bad, yo. Enjoy!!**

As a few of you know, Scott and I hosted our first holiday dinner last weekend! We travel so much over Christmas and Thanksgiving, that we've decided to make Easter Dinner at our house an annual event. Last Sunday was the first ever! Our menu was: glazed ham, scalloped potatoes, minted peas, corn muffins, and this delicious carrot soup. The original recipe from Martha Stewart included garlic and parsnips, but I left those out because I wanted to really taste carrot! And I forgot parsnips at the store. They weren't very important, anyway. The parsnips were just chopped, sauteed and placed in the bottom of the bowl. I didn't have time to plate up everyone, so we had a buffet style, and this soup worked just great without parsnips and carrots in the bottom of the bowl!

This soup is delicious at room temperature for a refreshing spring vegetable. I suggest anyone make it with a lean ham or turkey. Just pick your favorite green vegetable and you're ready to go!

A side note about organic cooking. I've been doing a lot of reading about how to maximize money spent on organic foods, and which foods are worth spending money on organic versions because of the amount of pesticides and other contaminants used in mass production. Carrots were on the top 10 list of produce to always buy organically. I will post the entire list with more information later. I just wanted to inform people why I used organic soup. If eating organically is not something you are interested in, regular carrots will do fine.

Organic Carrot Soup

• 3 Tbsp butter or butter substitute (olive oil, butter spread, etc)
• 2 lbs organic carrots, cut in 1/2 inch thick slices on the diagonal
• 1/4 c. diced onion
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, or 1/4 tsp dry ground ginger
• pinch of sugar/Splenda
• salt
• pepper
• 2 cups chicken broth (can use vegetable broth if you want to go vegetarian)
• 3/4 cups milk
  

1. melt butter (or substitute) in a medium saucepan. Add carrots, onion, ginger, sugar, 2 tsp salt and pepper. Stir. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cook until carrots are tender, 10-15 minutes. If you forget about them and, say, start wandering around your apartment picking up things before people come over for Easter dinner, and they cook for about 20 minutes, it's ok.
2. Add broth and milk. season with salt and pepper.
3. Blend until most of the carrots are smooth. Leave some chunks for texture. I used an immersion blender, and it was awesome. But if you don't have one, CAREFULLY pour soup in batches into a food processor or blender.

Carb Options
This soup would be delicious with some corn muffins on the side. Jiffy corn mix is completely delicious, and there is no reason to spent all the time and money making them from scratch!