Broccoli and Cheese soup with Outback Croutons

 I made a broccoli and cheese soup for lunch this past week. My feeling is it's never too hot for soup. I don't want to eat it outside, on the patio in this weather, but a hearty bowl of veggie goodness is a great lunch anytime.

Light fare to keep you nourished while you while away the hours reading, baking, cleaning (HA), dog walking or gardening before it's dinner time.

There was a bit of Outback bread leftover from last week's baking and I thought it would make remarkable toasted croutons for the soup.

 

This is a vegetarian offering until you add the bacon.  But you don't have to add bacon. There were two slices of bacon leftover from something......can't remember as sometimes the days run together.  Anyway, after frying them up and cubing the leftover bread I smooshed the cubes around in the bacon fat.  Then I toasted them for about 10 minutes in the oven.

The broccoli was still in large chunks and so I tried using my immersion blender to smooth the texture out a bit.  For some reason it did not work, at all.  So I dropped the soup into the food processor and that made it nice and smooth.  Just a few chunks.

     

This soup is a little different from one I made two years ago, a SkinnyTaste recipe.  See that HERE if you want.  No carrots in this one.  It's your basic list of ingredients - steamed broccoli (which was leftover from the previous dinner), a cheese sauce with flour, butter, milk and cheddar.  Salt, pepper, garlic powder and nutmeg.

I don't measure ingredients so it's pretty much different each time.  This variation uses homemade croutons and bacon. 

Sharing with Deb at Kahakai Kitchen for Souper Sunday.  Check out her cold cucumber soup this week.