A Ruby Do

Sometimes, Ruby does my hair. And them I'm pretty.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

Okay, as mentioned previously, I had tons of broccoli between my own bumper crop and the CSA farm's bumper crop. As I had never made cream of broccoli soup, I decided to give it a try.

First, I researched recipes online. Later, after it was done, I remembered that I had a basic recipe in my red checkered Better Homes & Garden cookbook. It was similar to the one I used. Oh well.

I picked a simple one from allrecipes.com, called

The Best Cream of Broccoli Soup

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

3 cups chicken broth

8 cups broccoli florets

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 cups milk

ground black pepper to taste

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in medium sized stock pot, and saute onion and celery until tender. Add broccoli and broth, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Pour the soup into a blender, filling the pitcher no more than halfway full. Hold down the lid of the blender with a folded kitchen towel, and carefully start the blender, using a few quick pulses to get the soup moving before leaving it on to puree. Puree in batches until smooth and pour into a clean pot. Alternately, you can use a stick blender and puree the soup right in the cooking pot.

In small saucepan, over medium-heat melt 3 tablespoons butter, stir in flour and add milk. Stir until thick and bubbly, and add to soup. Season with pepper and serve.

I pretty much followed the recipe, and I used my stick blender, which saved time and mess. I didn't measure the broccoli, I just used a lot, probably a lot more than they called for and I think I should have used more onion. I used whole milk so it would be more creamy, and I used vegetable broth. I was out of chicken stock. And I steamed the broccoli ahead of time, mostly because I was using some of the stems and figured they needed extra time. Big mistake.

Thing #1 to note for next time: even if you cook them down, broccoli stems are stringy. And the strings are not fun to run into when you're eating the soup. Maybe peeling them would help with that. The smaller stems from the branches near the florets were fine, but the bigger ones were not. I picked out the biggest ones before I made the soup because they seemed too tough.

Thing #2 to note for next time: vegetable broth doesn't have as good of a flavor as chicken stock. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. Personally, I don't think it makes a good soup base, even for vegetable soups. But all I had was the veg broth, so that's what I used. The soup was kind of bland and not very exciting. Veg stock is also not as salty, and the recipe didn't call for salt, and while I did put in a little, it wasn't enough. Extra salt and pepper in the bowl helped, but it wasn't super awesome.

Thing #3 to note for next time: my kids didn't like it very much, but they ate it more after I offered them some parmesan cheese to sprinkle on it. They still didn't like it much. Maybe next time I'll do cheesy cream of broccoli.

All-in-all, not a complete bust, but definitely room for improvement. Here's a picture of the soup in my pretty soup tureen.

If any of you have a better recipe or any useful suggestions, I'd appreciate them. I do like broccoli and it grows so well around here in the winter. No bug or disease problems, so we grow a lot of it.

Baseball

In the past, we've signed our kids up for t-ball/baseball/softball in the next town over. Our town has its own Little League, but I didn't like the schedule. They have games all during the week and it seems like everyone playing in our town disappears off the face of the earth for months when baseball starts. It's crazy.

The next town over, on the other hand, has an eight week season, games are either on Saturday morning or one day during the week, though mostly on Saturday. Coaches have two one-hour practices until games start, then there's one on game weeks. It was great for me. The problem was that it wasn't great for the kids.

Because they didn't go to school with any of the kids on their teams, they weren't making friends. Isn't one of the points of joining teams to make friends? All the other kids on the teams knew each other and went to school together and they would just all naturally group together. So, this year we decided that our kids should play in the Little League here in town, because it's better for them.

All the kids from their school that play ball, play in our town's league. They'll be able to make friends, and also meet new kids who may live around the corner, but go to a different school. They'll get to know kids from school better and maybe find a new connection with kids they didn't know very well before.

I'm already hating it. We got the practice schedule for Sam, and tonight he has practice for two hours, then again Saturday night at 7 p.m. Who starts practice for kids his age at 7 p.m.??? They'd better not try to run it for two hours. That's just ridiculous. Since the coaches are parents, too, you'd think they'd be more concerned about schedules and such. Ugh. And we haven't even gotten the game schedule yet. When practice games start, he has three in one week, 4:30-6:30 p.m, Mon, Wed, Thur. AND, on top of all that, the season is longer than the other town.

I know it's the right thing to do for my kids, but I'm not sure I'm going to survive it.

We'll still do soccer in the next town--we have a very poorly organized soccer league in our town and everyone I know goes to the next town. Their soccer league is just as awesome as the baseball league, only there are tons of kids from our town in it.

And that's my Complaints About My Kids' Activities entry for the day. Thank you.

Broccoli

I have more broccoli than I can eat. It's starting to flower. So, on Friday, I'll be making Cream of Broccoli Soup, and I'll freeze a lot of it. Some of the heads are huge, and one head is good for the whole family, so we're not eating much at one time. Plus, after you cut off the main head, little side shoots start growing, so there's just a lot of broccoli in my garden right now. I'm thinking next year, I'll stagger the plantings so everything isn't ready all at once.

Anyway, I'll be reporting on my Cream of Broccoli Soup Adventure. I'm posting this so I feel pressured to actual do the report. I'm not much of a blogger, as it turns out. I'm sure no one wants to read about my very full, but rather dull schedule. Drive a kid here, drive a kid there, music, lessons, sports, scouts, science olympiad teams, drumline teams. We're so busy with three kids going three different directions. Just looking at my calendar wears me out.