1 large onion, chopped
3 1 / 2 cup homemade stock, chicken or turkey
3 cups broccoli florets, chopped
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons margarine
Bay leaf

3 tablespoons butter
1 / 4 cup flour
2 cups milk
1 1 / 2 cups half and half
3 tablespoons sour cream
salt and pepper to taste

Grated cheddar cheese

1. In a large pot sauté onions with 4 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of
margarine. In a food processor, if you have one, chop broccoli florets until
you have 3 cups full of small chopped broccoli pieces. Add broccoli florets to
onions and cook both until everything is tender.
2. Add chicken stock and bay leaf to onions and broccoli, cook for 15 minutes at
a slow simmer. Turn off heat and let sit.
3. In a separate medium size pot, melt 3 tablespoons of butter. Add flour and stir
quickly to make a thicken white sauce by adding the half and half first, and
then the milk. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon. Sprinkle in salt and pepper
to taste. When the white sauce is slightly thicken, remove from heat and slowly
pour into a big pot with chicken stock and broccoli.
4. Remove bay leaf from the soup. Heat thoroughly the cream of broccoli soup. Add
the sour cream last and stir until well blended into soup. Serve garnished with
grated cheddar cheese on top. (The longer the soup sits the thicker it becomes,
the next day it is even better.)
5. ENJOY – It’s a mean, green, soup tureen kind a soup!

Spring is funny, some days are warm and sunny. But some days are colder than all of the winter months put together, so never put away those winter clothes until the beginning of May! New York weather has a mind of its own. There is no rhyme or reason to it. This is why we are still looking for good, wholesome, warm- me-up recipes to keep us going. This soup is great any time. I decided to make this particular soup because my daughter ate it at a restaurant and loved it. That’s all the motivation I needed to duplicate a recipe that one of my family members loved. I love them; therefore I want to feed them what they love to eat.

Recently, I had plans to meet a friend in the city with my daughter, Mia. My friend would bring her son, and we were going to a show and also lunch. My friend had to cancel the day before, but Mia and I decided to go ourselves anyway. To be honest, I am not a city person on a regular basis. I love it but only go into the city occasionally. Manhattan is the best place on earth, but you need money in your pocket, a lot of money. If you are the way I am, you can get around it by reading the newspapers and paying attention to those tiny little columns about the things you can do in Manhattan at a discount price or for free. Mia and I started our adventure that day with a ride on the railroad, $32.00 for round trip tickets. We ventured into Grand Central Station, which still amazes me every time I walk into the center, and I continue to look in awe at its beauty. Three weeks earlier I had made an appointment for a storyboard interview in Grand Central Station with Mia. I found this information in the newspaper and discovered only a $10.00 donation was required to experience this interview. A copy of the interview would go to the Library of Congress and a copy would go to me for an oral history of our family. Since we have no one left in my family, I asked Mia to interview me. It was totally spontaneous and very emotional for both of us. It was an experience valued at much more than $10.00. Then we went to TKTS booth at 47th Street and waited on line for the 1 /2 price tickets to a Broadway show for that afternoon. By the time we made it to the front of the line (1 to 2 hours of waiting outside in the cold), the pickings were slim. La Cage aux Folles was one of our top 5 choices, and it was still available. I purchased 2 tickets for $75.00, which is a great price for a Broadway comedy musical. We had an hour and a half to kill before show time. No problem, since we were starving and freezing. We ran to a restaurant and had lunch after waiting 20 minutes for a table. Lunch was the only downside to the whole day, costing $43.00 for a very over-priced hockey puck hamburger and gross nachos. The cream of broccoli soup was the only part of the meal that Mia loved. After the show, I suggested we walk about 25 city blocks to see the art work of the “Gates” in Central Park because it would be over soon. This was free and, and we also had plenty of exercise from walking over 50 blocks all together. The total cost for the day was $160.00. This was still expensive considering the discounted prices, but the experiences I shared with my daughter were definitely priceless.

So when we arrived home, I made cream of broccoli soup for my daughter because I wanted to keep the memory going. She ate it, and said she liked the restaurant’s soup better. And that’s okay because I was with her all that day, and we shared the soup in the restaurant, and that is more important to me than my soup being the best one!