With Love

I hope you all had a fantastic Valentine's Day! As usual we celebrated by doing some of our favorite things, which reminds me to be thankful we live where we do. Everyday I discover something new and wonderful about our area, or am reminded of another fantastic hidden gem. Some things I love about our area that I discovered or reconnected with this weekend:

• Strawberry Boba in my milk tea. Flavored boba is so much better than the regular kind.
• The insane amount of gourmet chocolate shops. Handmade artisan chocolate is lurking around every corner.
• Secret local restaurants. There's a place we go that we both love, but it's a bit off the beaten path and very much a "locals only" kind of place. If you don't live in our neighborhood, you've probably never even heard of it. And we kinda like it that way.
• Our own mini-Epcot! Without the lines and high prices, but still with international food and fun.
  
• The best local bread. Perfect for our all soup all the time diet.
  
• French patisseries with tea and macarons. This one really doesn't need explanation, does it?
  
• Streets of used book stores. Loads of books at fractions of the price.
• Fantastic theater
• local art and artists

And I'm thankful to be moving on to the heavier soup recipes. Soups that really are a meal in themselves. Except when I saw that the first recipe was cream of asparagus. Raise your hand if you see the problem here. Yes - you in the back - with the black shirt. A little louder please, those of us in the front can't quite hear you. Yes, that's right - I don't do asparagus. Which means, instead you will be treated to a cream of broccoli soup. Mmmmmmmm.

This is probably a good time to talk to you a little bit about "cream of" soups. In general, we don't do them in Thathouse. With the exception of cream of tomato I'm not a user of cream of crap soups. Frankly, I'm not even quite sure what they put in them, but I'm tempted to believe it's not food. Which means I have turned away quite a number of recipes calling for cream of - chicken, celery, mushroom.....However, this is nothing like it's canned cousins. Perfect on it's own, but also fabulous for anything you might have previously used the can for. And I can guarantee the quality of the ingredients. Fresh cream, fresh veggies, and that stock you've all got stored up in the fridge/freezer. Not bad right? Pretty simple? For this one, since we were eating a whole bowl of it, I even used skim milk and no salt. So now we have low (no?) fat and low (no?) sodium. And OHHHHHHH so tasty! And now I get to go back to those forsaken recipes and give them a try with my own homemade stuff!

Cream of Broccoli Soup (Adapted from Fannie Farmer's Cream of Asparagus Soup)

• 1 lb broccoli
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 2 Tbsp chopped onion
• 1 cup milk
• salt and pepper

1. Wash and trim broccoli.
2. Cook the broccoli in 2 cups boiling water until tender.
3. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the water.
4. Chop the broccoli and reserve them.
5. Put the chicken stock, onion, and reserved water in a pan and bring to a boil.
6. Add the broccoli and simmer for 5 minutes.
7. Puree in a food processor.
8. Return to the pot and add milk and salt and pepper to taste. Reheat.