It's Souper Time! — v i c k i h a l l

I don’t know about your Instagram feed…but mine is crammed full of suggested posts about food. Truth be told, it has sucked me right in. I’m not a great cook, heck I’m hardly a good cook and I attribute it to the fact that my husband is a very picky eater and one of my son’s has the whole spectrum of food allergies. I just never really had a chance to practice. Sorry for throwing them under the bus, but these are the facts. Hence, we eat out a lot (sorry, not sorry) and when I do cook, it’s super simple and strait forward meat n’ potatoes and pasta meals around these parts. But every once in awhile I like to branch out a make something that I like - even if I’m the only one who will eat it. Enter Instagram reels!

Instagram reels makes cooking look super easy and fun. Every dish looks tantalizing and delish. I’ve probably saved over fifty cooking reels featuring everything from ‘Better Than Starbucks Lemon Loaf’ to ‘Spinach & Feta Stuffed Chicken”. But it was the Roasted Cauliflower Soup from @organicallyca that has recently been stalking my feed. I know enough about cooking that I’m aware it’s pretty difficult to screw up a soup…especially one that doesn’t involve boiling a chicken carcass. I also happen to have a hand mixer and I like cauliflower, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. The reel had no list of ingredients or link to a recipe - so I just just wrote down what I saw and wished for the best.

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER SOUP - from Instagram reels @organicallyca.

Ingredients:

1 large head of cauliflower

3 shallots

4 cloves of garlic (you could probably use more)

2 sprigs of thyme - or at least I think it was thyme.

Salt n’ pepper

Olive Oil

1 small potato (I added this to give the soup a little extra body)

On a baking pan lined with parchment I tossed the cauliflower florets, shallots and garlic (in its skin) in olive oil. I added the sprigs of thyme to the top. Since I know parchment can only take heat up to 350 degrees - I preheated the oven and tossed the pan in. Scientific right?

Believe it or not, I only opened the oven once to peek and toss. While the cauliflower situation was roasting, I boiled a small potato. After about 45 minutes…my cauliflower looked like this…nice right? It looked toastier that Instagram reel, but I didn’t think that mattered.

I tossed all the contents of roasting pan and the potato into a medium sized (guessed on the size) pot. I squeezed in the roasted garlic and immediately regretted not roasting more. Oh well…next time.

I added a 900ml tetra pack of vegetable broth. I literally had no idea how much broth to add…but this seemed to look like a good amount. And it’s all I had…so no other choice. I got to blending and an amazing thing happened…

…it started to look like a big pot of Cream of Wheat! Did you ever eat that as a kid? Actually it started to smell and look really, really good. After a wee taste test I decided all it needed was a little sea salt and pepper. My easy peasy Instagram reel soup worked! Not only did it work…it was actually really tasty. See…you can’t actually screw up soup.