Happy Sunday friends! I hope you’ve all had a lovely weekend thus far. It’s been rather blustery here in Toronto so I’ve been cooped up working on case studies and interviews, rekindling my love of the Gilmore Girls, and eating lots of hearty roast veggies. This soup is one of my favourites because it combines my two true loves: roasted garlic and cauliflower. It’s incredibly simple and perfect for these cold and rainy fall days. Curl up with a mug and your favourite book and you won’t even notice the storm outside!

These guys are the staple ingredients for pretty much all of my soup recipes

Roasted Garlic and Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp. butter, ghee, olive or coconut oil

6-8 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

1 red or yellow onion, chopped

1 head of cauliflower, chopped

2 cups water or broth

1 can coconut milk

Salt to taste

Directions:

1. Add oil and garlic to a large saucepan on low heat.
2. Cover and let simmer until garlic is soft and light brown, making sure it doesn’t burn.
3. Add onion and cauliflower. Mix.
4. Add enough water or broth to cover veggies.
5. Simmer until soft, about 20 minutes.
6. Remove from heat, add coconut milk, and puree until smooth.
7. Add salt to taste. Garnish with green onions or chives.

Healthy Bites:

Cauliflower: This amazingly delicious veggie is part of the cruciferous/brassica family so its relatives include broccoli, kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts (which I just discovered I LOVE). Like the other brassicas it contains the awesome sulfur compounds, which help support liver detoxification. It’s also an incredibly versatile veggie. You can toss it in a food processor and turn it into a great rice substitute, make it into soups, serve it as a roasted side, puree it and turn it into a mashed potato substitute, the possibilities are endless!  Cauliflower is also a fabulous source of fibre to help keep everything moving in the right direction and ensure proper elimination of toxins.

Our final product. Creamy, garlicky, and delicious!

Garlic: This delicious little fella packs quite the nutritional punch. Thanks to its sulfur content, specifically in the form of allicin, garlic has great anti-bacterial and antiviral properties and it totally helps boost antioxidant activity!

Onions: Nothing makes me quite so teary eyed as a delicious red onion (I’m sorry for that) and these bad boys are full of phytonutrients (plant nutrients) which help decrease inflammation.! I’ve also heard it said that the stinkier an onion, the more nutritionally powerful it is so don’t be afraid to shed some tears, y’all! They also contain sulfur and we already know how good naturally occurring sulfur is for our bodies.

Coconut Milk: As you can probably tell, a lot of my soup recipes have recurring cast members, and coconut milk is one star who I add to all my pureed soups. I love a thick, creamy soup, but I do not love the digestive distress that comes with adding cream or dairy to my soups, so coconut milk is the perfect alternative. It’s deliciously creamy and provides those amazing medium chain triglycerides that help us burn fat and pack an antimicrobial punch. However, it should be noted that if you can’t find coconut milk, most of these soup recipes will taste just as delicious without it.

Sea Salt: Now I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill table salt here. I’m talking the grey, clumpy, slightly moist salt that you just know came from some beautiful ocean waters. Authentic sea salt contains trace minerals from the sea to help support immunity and metabolic function, and I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I made the switch I found I had to use less salt to get the same effect. It was a very salty learning curve. Anyway, I highly suggest making the switch to real grey sea salt. It’s not overly expensive, it lasts for ages, and it doesn’t contain the bleaching and anti-caking agents found in regular table salt.

Well there we have it friends! It’s a little shorter today since I’ve got some work to finish up (and I may have plagiarized myself a bit, shhhh), but I hope you enjoy your Souper Bowl Sunday! Happy eating!

Cait

Update: Since typing up this post 15 minutes ago, my cousin has just informed me that Toronto is getting flood warnings thanks to hurricane Sandy. I don’t know why, but I just LOVE a giant storm. They’re so powerful and a great excuse to drink my various herbal teas and stay in my pjs all day. That being said, I hope it doesn’t cause too much destruction or injury to those in its path. And I sincerely hope this isn’t the one that finally does PEI in.