Awesome Birthday Soup

One of my room mate's birthday is today and so I offered to cook something ( for yesterday cause I had work today). I was planning on going for cupcakes or something dessert related but he requested creamy potato and broccoli soup. He's somewhat lactose intolerant so he asked if it could be made with as little dairy as possible. I'm always up for a challenge so I browsed through a few different types of recipes to get some ideas. I looked at potato leek soup, Panera cream cheese potato soup, non-dairy mashed potatoes and a few others. At the conclusion of my research I had a pretty good idea of how to create a nice non-dairy soup. I think that it came out pretty kickin' considering that I've never made potato soup before. I might have added a little less broccoli and cooked the potatoes for a little shorter so they held together better, but I think overall it achieved success. A little cheese thrown on top wouldn't hurt either.

So here's my recipe for Vegan Potato Broccoli soup: (I didn't measure anything so it's a little vague)
Ingredients-
2 small or 1 large head of broccoli
3 russet potatoes
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
Olive oil
Plain Soy Milk
Vegetable stock ( or chicken stock if you're not cooking for vegetarians)
Toffuti 'cream cheese'
1 tsp Flour
Sprig of Fresh Rosemary
Salt, pepper, Onion powder to taste

Instructions:
Peel potatoes and cut into small chunks. Add potatoes and vegetable stock to a pot. Potatoes should be covered so add water if there's not enough stock (ideally all stock would be better but I didn't have enough). Boil potatoes until just tender.

Meanwhile, dice the onion and the garlic and saute in a pan with oil until nicely browned. Chop broccoli florets into halves. Add the onions and garlic to a large soup pot with the broccoli. Add a little oil to the pan and cook the broccoli. After 2 minutes add a few teaspoons of water to the pot to help steam the broccoli.
When the potatoes are tender add half the stock water to the large pot and continue to cook the broccoli. Add all the potatoes. Mash a few of the pieces to release starch and to thicken the soup. Add soymilk until creamy. Make sure you use plain soymilk, not vanilla or the taste will be sweet. The soup will still be pretty thin at this point. Add three healthy tablespoons of tofutti. Add Rosemary for taste. Add salt and pepper for taste. Onion powder can be added as well.

If soup needs thickening ( which I think it does) mix flour in a small bowl with a small amount of soy milk. Stir until mixed thoroughly and add to the soup. This will help thicken it up nicely.

Taste the soup to see if it needs anything. I needed to add a bit more salt and pepper. The soup has a nice creamy quality without having any dairy in it! Of course you can add a nice sprinkle of cheese on top if you want too. Enjoy with a bagel flat!

And what else goes well with a delicious soup? Pie of course! I had a can of pumpkin so I couldn't resist making a nice pumpkin pie. It's insanely simple, except for needing to buy the spices. It's basically a can of pumpkin + sweetened condensed milk +Eggs+ ginger, nutmeg and Cinnamon and a pie crust. Bam! Pumpkin Pie!