My first homemade soup!

I just got back into Chicago from the holiday with the fam.  Sorry I skipped a couple meals but I only had ~24 hours with my boyfriend and I won't be seeing him for 3 weeks because he has finals! So I put the blogging on hold for a little to spend as much time as possible with him! 

Tonight I made my first soup! I made Tuscan White Bean and Garlic Soup.  It was a Giada recipe, from her Everyday Pasta cookbook. Since it is her recipe I won't post the whole thing, but I will tell you my minor modifications and what I thought! 

There were basically 3 modifications: 

1. Whole Foods was out of fresh sage! Apparently it was a popular ingredient in many people's Thanksgiving meal.   So instead of using one fresh sage leaf, I used 1 tsp of dried sage.  TIP:  For spices/herbs that you may not use very often, some store (like Whole Foods) has there spices/herbs in bulk, so you can buy just however much you need instead of buying a whole container of it.  I find this very convenient and it's a good money saver. 
   
2. Instead of reduced-sodium chicken broth, I used reduced-sodium vegetable broth.  One of my bosses, Vivian, turned me on to this product that I just bought. It's called Better Than Bouillon.  It was about $5 and it makes 38 cups of broth.  You add 1 teaspoon of this product to 1 cup boiling water to make your own broth (So for this soup, I brought 4 cups of water to a boil, then added 4 tsp of "Better Than Bouillon").  I've now had two soups using this product and I think it has a really nice flavor. Here's a picture in case you want to look for it:
3. Instead of using 1/2 c of heavy cream, I used 1/2 cup of half and half. I know it is only 1/2 cup of heavy cream in a soup that yields about 5-6 cups (once it's cooked down), but I couldn't help but go for an option that is a little lower in calories and fat.  (Heavy cream has about 36-40% fat and 10-18% fat). 

Here's the final product:

 I topped it with a little freshly grated parmesan.  I also toasted up some of a whole wheat baguette with olive oil, salt & pepper, and a sprinkle of parmesan.  To drink I had Blueberry Pomegranate POM (~1/2 cup) with sparkling water and ice.  I loved the soup!  It was thinner than I thought it would be (it goes in the blender for a little), but the cannellini beans gave almost a nutty flavor, that was great with the garlic and cream. 

I have a night of movies and magazines ahead of me, yay!  Good night!