Veggie Soup

In keeping with my desire to enhance the number of veggies that I consume every day, I stole a soup idea from my sister, who has made many radical changes in her diet since having to surmount cancer last year.  I made this recipe about ten days ago and have just finished eating it.  It's chalk full of a variety of different veggies and I'm sure eating one bowl full of this stuff would amount to at least 2-3 servings of greens.

Roasted Vegetable Soup
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Chop off the top bit of two whole bulbs/heads of garlic (just enough so that you can see the open tops of the cloves inside) and place them on a large cookie sheet.  Drizzle with a bit of olive oil to prevent them from drying out.  Pop the garlic into the oven for about 20 minutes (until you're ready to add the other veggies).

While the garlic is getting started, coarsely chop the following veggies (these are the ones I used last weekend; but you could use whatever combination you like or have on hand):

Cauliflower - a whole head of it
1-2 turnips
4 huge carrots
4 parsnips
Butternut squash (I used approx. one third of a huge one)
2 large onions
Several large mushrooms (I used 3 giant portabella)
1 yam
2 red peppers
whatever other veggies you have.

In a large bowl, toss the veggies together with a drizzle of olive oil.

Once the garlic has baked for approximately twenty minutes, add all of the veggies to the cookie sheet.  Bake for a further 25-30 minutes.

When the veggies come out of the oven, shovel them into a litre (just enough to be able to puree them later) of simmering chicken broth - note: use a fork to pop all of the garlic out of their cloves.  Cover and simmer everything together for 15-20 minutes, adding whatever spices/herbs you'd like (I used salt and pepper, and herbs de provence).

Puree with hand (immersion) blender.

Add milk if you like...I used one can of skim evaporated milk.

You're done!  It's delicious.  Even Matthew ate a few small bowls of it...he declared it to be "pretty good" and "a bit sweet."  It's filling, it's thick and creamy, and it's chock full of a variety of veggies.  Oh, I topped with a bit of chopped, fresh parsley.  It was truly wonderful, and froze perfectly.  It was an easy way for me to 'up' my veggie quotient last week.

I'm going to be making another batch of this soup today.