We compost our food scraps and I noticed that since the kids don’t tend to eat most of the broccoli stalks, just the florets, I have been throwing them into the compost.  Well, I decided before tossing them into the compost, I’d keep aside a few meals’ worth in the fridge and make soup out of it.  I had some left over potato in two forms— boiled in the jacket and mashed.  I knew the mashed potato would thicken the soup nicely. You can just use a whole potato cut. brown specks are from the potato skins

Broccoli & Potato soup

2 cups of broccoli ends

1-2 potatoes

2 cups water, vegetable stock or chicken broth

2 tsp onion flakes

1 tsp garlic powder

1/4 cup cream

salt and pepper to taste

So, I cut up the broccoli stalks (and about one floret) into small pieces and brought them to a boil in water .  I cooked until tender and added the seasoning (I added 2 tsp chicken base too) and 2 different types of cooked potatoes.  Lastly I added the cream.  Once it had come back to a boil I took it off the heat and used the immersion blender to purée it.  Delicious and vibrant too!

My eldest son had it for lunch and deemed it “Delicious!” after getting over the fact I didn’t make potato leek soup. 

Since the potatoes were already cooked it didn’t take long.  You can always cut everything into small pieces, to increase the speed of cooking if you’re starting from raw, since they’re staying in the same liquid in which they’re cooked.