simple celery soup

Live in Snow Country? Feeling a bit chilled? This soup will warm your tummy, and even if you don't particularly care for celery, will make your taste buds verrrrry happy.

Adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, this has been Mamatouille-messed-with and now I'm sure has a completely different cellular composition than what BH & G started with. Anyway, try it and see if you like it - it's a bit vague so just play as you go.

You'll need:

• celery, about 4 cups chopped
• 1 or 2 onions, chopped
  
• water, about 1.5 cups
  
• chicken stock cubes - maybe 3 or so?
  
• chopped parsley, to taste
  
• white pepper, to taste
  

For the thin white sauce:

• 3 T. butter
• 3 T. flour
• 3 cups milk

Do this:

In a stock pot, boil the celery and onions till tender in some water and chicken stock cubes. In a separate small pan, make the white sauce (I like to use a wire whisk so the flour doesn't clump) by melting the butter, adding the flour bit by bit, stirring with the wire whisk, and then gradually adding the milk and stirring till thickened a bit. This will be thin so don't worry if you can't make a sidewalk with it.

Using a hand blender (immersion blender) or regular blender, blitz the celery, onions, and cooking water till almost smooth. Pour in the white sauce and taste for seasonings, throwing in a bit of chopped parsley and some ground white pepper. You shouldn't need any extra salt because of the highly salty stock cubes, but use your own personal judgment. You're a smart cookie - you can do it.

As you can see from the photo, our kiddiewinks love this, and I'll bet yours will, too.