Green soup

A close friend of mine and her two kids stayed with us for a couple of days when the school holidays had just started. While preparing dinner, we had got to talking about vege-packed dishes that are easy to make and the kids would eat. (On that day we had Sambar and potato masala for dinner…). It got me thinking about the dishes that we make that gets S (my daughter) involved in the process and willing to eat.

Enter: Green Soup.

So named because we told S to look into the fridge one day and pick out any vegetable that is green that could go into the soup- out came the zucchini, spinach, cucumber, gerkhins….yeah she was enthusiastic to say the least. Not wanting to put her off totally, we discussed it and decided to go with the zucchini and spinach. She was then asked to pick a medium onion and garlic. S then brought her chair to the counter and watched as I:

1. roughly chopped the onion into pieces, any size, doesn’t matter
2. finely chopped 2 cloves of garlic
3. washed and sliced the zucchini – 3 medium
4. washed the spinach (baby spinach, it was what was in the fridge)
5. heated the oil in a medium saucepan and sauteed the onion and garlic for a few minutes
6. boiled about 1L of water (you won’t need all of it)
7. added in the zucchini (she helped to put some slices in) and cooked that for a 3-4 minutes
8. poured the boiled water into a measuring jug, added 1.5 tsp of vegetable stock to it (she stirred the stock in very gently)
9. added the hot stock to the pot barely covering the zucchini, covered the pan,  brought the soup to a boil and simmered for 15-20mins
10. added the spinach (200g, half the bag) to the soup in the last 5 mins of cooking
11. blitzed it into a lovely, thick, creamy, green soup (now she helps with the blitzing)
12. tasted for salt and pepper (S helped with the adjustment of seasoning, telling me which one she thought I needed to add more of)
13. poured the soup into her waiting bowl.

I also make some cheesy-toast to go with the soup (sandwich bread, melted cheese of choice…)- S helps put the cheese on the bread now…

This soup, I found, was a winner with my son, K. When we were weaning him, I would mix a ladleful of the soup into “Schmelz flocken” (oat flakes that melts quickly in liquid) and he would inhale it. I would reduce the stock to 1 tsp and add the salt after taking out his portion.

We also make a pea and pesto soup as another “green soup” alternative.

There you go J, 🙂 hope the kids like it!