Zucchini Soup --- from Dana Carpender's newsletter

[Guest guest]

This is the best soup! It's supposed to be served chilled, but I like it

better at at least room temp. It's good cold, room temp, warm, or hot

(but

not boiling).

I generally throw stuff into a pot, but I took time to measure out. My

only

guesswork was the herbs as I'd been using fresh ones and not sure how

they

translate to dry. I used dry herbs in ther recipe below, though, and it

tasted fine.

Carb counts are minus fiber.

Zucchini Soup - makes 9 cups soup at 9 carbs per 8 ounce cup.

4 cups zucchini (approx three 7 " zucchini) cut into chunks. [8.8 carbs]

2 cups spanish onion (not the sweet vidalia!), chopped. [22 carbs]

4 cups chicken stock, fresh or canned (if fresh, salt to taste)

8 ounces cream cheese (put out to bring to room temperature for best

results) [<1 carb]

1-2 teaspoons dry summer savory (if you use fresh, about 1/4 cup leaves)

1 tablespoon dry basil (if fresh, about 1/2 cup leaves lightly packed)

(easy measurements, chunk up squash and onion, put in pan, add chicken

stock to just cover)

Place squash, onion, herbs and stock into pan. Cook until soft (30

minutes

minimum...you want it to be squashy (pun intended). I generally turn it

on

low heat and forget about it for a few hours). At this point you can

let

it cool down a bit or proceed to the next step.

Put the cream cheese and a small quanity of the cooked mixture into a

blender and blend until smooth. Add more liquid if needed to get the

cheese

smooth. Pour that into another pan. Add more of the cooked squash-onion

mixture to the blender and blend until smooth (or as smooth as you like

it). Continue this process with the rest of the cooked mixture, pouring

each blended batch into the soup-cheese mixture as you go. Once

everything

is blended, stir it well to mix in the initial cheese blend. That's it.

Now, this can be made with a mixture of yellow squash and zucchini, but

note that yellow squash has more carbs than zucchini. You can also use

green onion or leeks instead of the spanish onion. 2 cups of green onion

give you 9.6 carbs instead of 22. Two cups of leeks will give you 61.6

carbs (why are they so high?) instead of the 22.

I've mixed in flakes of leftover cooked salmon, or chunks of cold

leftover

chicken in this and it's great. You can garnish with some sliced green

onions or shallots and that's also wonderful. This soup lends itself to

many variations. Oh, and it freezes well! You can freeze it and heat up

later. The cream cheese seems to hold up to this just fine. And speaking

of

that, I suspect you could add cream to the mix instead of cream cheese.

This would increase the volume a bit, but no biggie.

--

Dana W. Carpender

Author, How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet -- And Lost Forty Pounds!

http://www.holdthetoast.com

Check out our FREE Low Carb Ezine!

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