Improvisational Soup

Well. It has certainly been a while since I've posted any recipes. Oops. Oh well. This blog is mainly for my own reference. I've certainly used it since May 2011!

Anyway, today I was feeling a bit guilty about all the bacon I've eaten over the past couple of weeks, and also craving some vegetables.

Boom. Improvisational soup is born. I will attempt to write down how I made it...though in the improvisational nature of it, nothing was measured, and everything relied upon what I already had in the kitchen.

Ingredients
1 giant clove of garlic
1 good sized carrot
3 medium potatoes
Couple handfuls of frozen broccoli
Small handful of spinach
Couple of teaspoons of chicken soup base (next time I might use homemade chicken stock)
Couple of glugs of milk
A few fingerfuls of whatever finely shredded cheese you have in the fridge (today was 4 cheese Mexican blend)
A sprinkle of pepper

Directions
Cut up the clove of garlic, peel and slice the carrot (doesn't really matter if you cut these very small, as you'll see later), peel and cut up one of the potatoes, throw everything into a pot of water and boil. Add some of the frozen broccoli. I just fished out a handful of the butts (the non-tree parts) and threw them in the water.
Set the timer for 15 minutes. After that's done turn the heat off and throw a small handful spinach in the pot. Assemble your blender (I use our blender at least once a day, so it is always either sitting in the sink waiting to be washed, or in the dishwasher waiting to be used). Strain the vegetables and put them in the blender.
In the same (now empty) pot, start boiling some more water. Peel and cut up the other two potatoes and throw them in. While they're boiling, blend/puree the vegetables in the blender. Add a ladleful of water from the pot of boiling potatoes as needed to help get things going.
Add some more broccoli trees to the pot of boiling potatoes.
Pour the blended vegetables into another small pot. Heat on medium/low heat. Add a couple of glugs of milk to make it the thickness you would like. Stir frequently (heating up things with milk too quickly can get gross, so don't be too impatient). Add the couple of teaspoons of chicken soup base and keep stirring. Add a few sprinkles of pepper too (no need for salt, you just put soup base in your soup, after all).
When the potatoes and broccoli are boiled to your liking, strain them and add them to the blended vegetable mix. Stir.
Add a few fingerfuls of the finely shredded cheese to the pot, stirring each fingerful in before adding another. I think I did about 3-4 fingerfuls.
Stir some more until it is a good temperature.
Pour into a bowl and eat.
Serves one hungry person (but of course you can always make a giant batch to serve more, this was just an experiment).

Yum.