Sunday's Soup

Creamy Winter Root Vegetable Soup

Today's soup is not a Panera Bread soup recipe, although there are 2 other recipes from their website that I would still like to try. When I went to the market this morning, all of the winter root vegetables looked so good, so I thought I would try something a little different and wow! did it turn out to be a lovely soup.

Ingredients;
4 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of olive oil
4 parsnips, about 3 pounds in total
4 Irish potatoes
4 carrots
2 yellow onions
4 cloves of garlic
4 tablespoons of chopped fresh basil
2 bay leaves
7 cups of vegetable or chicken broth
1 cup of half and half or milk
salt and black pepper to taste

Begin by melting the butter in a large, heavy soup pot. Add olive oil.
Add carrots and onions and cook over a medium heat until onions are tender.
Add chopped parsnips, potatoes, garlic basil, bay leaves and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and   simmer until vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
Remove and discard bay leaves.
Using an immersion blender, blend soup until creamy.
This is a large pot of soup, so if you would like to freeze some for later, remove what you would like to freeze at this point.
Add half and half or milk, being careful to heat without boiling.
Add salt and fresh black pepper to taste.

 The soup is so aromatic and it's even pretty as it cooks!

 To serve, top with some chopped green onions,

and devour!!!! The parsnips and the carrots give the soup a slightly sweet taste. I'm looking forward to bowls of this soup all week long :)

I also made the Cinnamon Apple Cake that I posted here last summer. So, between the soup and the apple cake, my house smells heavenly!

Hope you're having a lovely Sunday. I'm off to take a walk and burn off a few calories after that Apple Cake!!!!