Roasted Broccoli Soup

I've always wondered what the difference between a vegetable soup and a vegetable purée was.

Well. Wonder no more. Just get your oven, stove and blender of choice ready and prepare yourself for the simplest way to pack as much liquid flavour into broccoli as possible.

This is actually super easy, and doesn't take very long hands on time to do. Especially for the warm hug of flavour you get from it.

Roasted Broccoli Soup

2 heads broccoli
olive oil, for roasting, for frying and adding at the end
4 cloves garlic
500ml broth, plus water

Chop the broccoli into pretty large florets, cover with oil (especially the brushy bits) and pop into a prelined dish. Roast in a preheated oven for 15 - 20 minutes or until tender.

Fry garlic cloves in a large saucepan with some oil in the bottom on low, until slightly brown. Add the broccoli (with the roasting olive oil too, if you like) and fry it a little if you want.
Pour in the broth, and if the water level doesn't reach to nearly the top of the broccoli, add some water until nearly covered.
Heat the water until hot (not boiling - it ruins the gelatine in the broth) and let it go for 10 - 15 minutes.
Purée the contents of the pot. I used a stick blender, which is a lot easier, but feel free to pour it into a normal blender and do it like that. Blend to your consistency liking (I like mine chunky).
Serve with a drizzle of olive oil on top.

Super Lazy Almond Spread

I'm not going to lie. This stuff is not amazing. It's nothing like almond butter. It goes to show that if you're bothered to put the effort into something, it will turn out great. The opposite is true in this: I didn't try and so the result was not so fabulous. But I knew it wouldn't be spectacular, and I didn't try to make it spectacular, so that's ok. This stuff comes down to versatility, patience and time

I soaked a big batch of almonds nearly a week ago and they've dried a bit on the outside but they're nowhere near dehydrated. I wanted to make almond butter with almonds in this weird middle state so I popped a few in the blender and carelessly knocked the power to high.

And after a few scrapes and moving-of-chopped-almondy-bits and spooning around in there, I had spready, kinda oily stuff. It was chunky - super chunky at that, I found some whole almonds in there - and moist from the water but it was a quick almond butter style spread. And because the almonds are soaked, you won't feel like you've swallowed a brick when you eat a massive spoonful.

90% of the time, my nut butters just get blended into my smoothies so it doesn't really matter what it looks like or how moist it feels. What DOES matter to me, though, is the time it takes to make, and the cleaning up, which this nutty spread doesn't require a lot of.

So if you're really looking for an easy way to making nourishing nut stuff, have a try of this. You probably don't have to wait a week for the nuts to be in the fridge, but make sure they're not dripping wet or anything. They should only be moist on the inside.

But I'm just going to say, it's not the same as true almond butter.