"Only the pure of heart can make good soup." ~ Beethoven

I don't think I've ever really made soup from scratch before. (Is that an embarrassing thing to admit?)

Don't get me wrong...I've eaten soup and reheated soup and added things to soup, but I've never quite "made" soup. (Quotes intentional)

It's also not like I don't like soup...in fact, it's pretty safe to say the opposite!

Although at one point in my childhood you'd be hard pressed to even get me near creamed soups of any sort.  

Looking back, I realise my dad (who often made us soup on weekends) never properly whisked those powdery packaged soups, so I would inevitably end up with little chunks that suspiciously looked like mushrooms, but were in fact globs of undissolved soup. Ummm...gross.

I am happy to report that I have perfected the creamed soup from a package technique (which likely was a result of my past employment at Tim Hortons for 6 years), but until today I had barely thought about making soup myself...like, from scratch and all.

All I knew this morning was that I had some cauliflower in the fridge that was starting to go off and needed to be used right away and the first thing that came to my mind was...awesome, soup.

Okay, that was more like the second thought that came to mind, right after the thought that if I didn't get on this, cauliflower will seriously start stinking things up in the fridge.

So I pulled out my Ken's Soup Krazy book by Ken Kostick (which I was given back in the days when I worked at an online book retailer) and set about making soup.

 Celery & Cauliflower Soup with White Wine

(adapted from Ken Kostick's 'Ken's Soup Krazy')

(serves 6)

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 med. chopped onion
• 2 cups cauliflower florets
• 1.5 cups of chopped celery
• 0.5 cups dry white wine
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 0.5 tsp each of dried oregano, basil and chili powder
• 0.5 tsp sea salt(I used merlot salt to go with the wine theme)
• 0.5 tsp black pepper
• 1 bay leaf (whole)
• 6 cups vegetable stock (I used chicken stock with garlic)
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1. In a soup pot, heat oil and add onion, cauliflower and celery. Cook until cauliflower is tender. 
2. Add wine and simmer for 10 minutes. 
3. Add all herbs (minus parsley),vinegar, salt & pepper, stock and bring to a boil.
4. Let simmer for 10 minutes and remove bay leaf.
5. Garnish soup with fresh parsley
6. Eat!

(I ended up putting this into the crock pot and mixing with a hand blender so it was more a pureed soup..including the parsley (which I enjoyed better than the unpureed version seen above))

Go forth mes amies and make soup!

I doubt I'm pure of heart, but it was a pretty darn good soup.