Cream of Celery and Potato Soup

I love homemade soup. It is fast, easy, nutritious, and delicious, not to mention cheap.

I don't love how my children balk at being presented with any new food item, especially anything that contains the colour green. I work and I slave, and for what?

For any mama of littles who feels my pain, I have a solution: blend it, baby!

Here’s a delicious and nutritious soup that was also a great way to use up the celery that was going brown in my crisper.

View fullsize

Cream Of Celery and Potato Soup

2 tbsp. butter*
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 med. onions, chopped
6 cups chicken stock (homemade is best)
3 cups whole milk*
4-6 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 to 1 head celery, chopped (depending how much you like celery)
few sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 tsp. dried)
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. green peppercorns, crushed
1 cup whipping cream*

Heat the butter and olive oil in a saucepan until melted. Saute the onions until soft (about 10 minutes.) Add the stock, milk, potatoes, celery, and thyme. Cook gently until vegetables are soft (about 20 minutes.) Do not let the milk boil.** If using fresh thyme, remove it now. Blend with a hand-held immersion blender until partially smooth, or run about half of it through a blender in batches. (Leave chunks of celery, etc. This is just to thicken it up a little, and so the kids have less trouble eating it!) Add the salt, peppercorns, and whipping cream. Re-heat gently, and serve.

Makes about 12 cups.

*Dairy-Free Option: Substitute coconut oil for butter. Instead of using milk and cream, substitute two 400 ml cans of coconut milk. Dairy-Free option with dried thyme pictured.

**Heating milk past a certain point kills enzymes that are needed for absorption of calcium, as well as other parts of the digestive process. This is why pasteurization is so bad. (Boiling milk also changes the proteins which creates a scummy skin on the surface of the soup and can make it curdle.)

View fullsize

Before blending. This is the coconut-milk version with dried thyme.

View fullsize

Cream of Celery and Potato Soup with real bone broth. Make it with or without dairy.