A Good Recipe Gone Bad...Gone Good

I was picking up some groceries yesterday in Ocean State Job Lots…I have to stop now to admit that I know it sounds like a kind of gross place to buy food. But they seriously have the best groceries—lots of organic foods, awesome flavored coffees, Teddy Natural peanut butter, organic whole wheat pastas—tons of my pantry staples. One of the best things they have is an entire aisle of Bob’s Red Mill products. Both of my girls were being cooperative yesterday, so I actually had time to look at all that Bob has to offer. And I found this veggie soup mix:

It looked like the perfect base for quick, easy soup. I decided I would make it that night and share my doctored up soup for my next blog post. I followed the directions on the bag, but added four carrots, an onion, and about half a bunch of kale (all thrown in the food processor for a few pulses to finely chop them), and a little bullion, salt, pepper, and thyme. It came out pretty good. I liked it, my hubby liked it, our friend who was over for dinner liked it. My two-year old, Lainey…gagged on it. Really. Full blown gagging with every bite. So much for my awesome blog on a great toddler-friendly, healthy soup. Damn.

Honestly, if I didn’t have this blog, I probably would have just eaten the soup myself all week until it was gone. But, now I have this self-imposed pressure to make healthy, kid-friendly food. So I put some thought into how I could possibly save it. This morning I had my moment of brilliance. I took some soup, added a splash of milk, and pureed it with my 2^nd favorite kitchen appliance (stand mixer with dough hook still takes 1st place!).

I gave the new and (hopefully) improved version to Lainey for lunch today. Not only was there no gagging, but this was what she said when her bowl was almost empty: “Scrape the bowl, Mommy, there’s some on the side.” Yup. I did it. I turned a gag-worthy soup into a scrape-the-bowl worthy soup.

So, if you have a toddler (or even a picky spouse) and don’t own an immersion blender, I would seriously consider some weekend immersion blender shopping. Happy puree-ing!