yoga truant mushroom soup

We had a summer break from yoga. September arrived. Hari called. Yoga class tonite at Betty's place. Okay. But it was not okay. ms_ani finally had the guts to back out and leave bob to do solo yoga. So while he was out going through the motions, unable as usual to even come close to most of the positions, ms_ani tried to compensate for his all too obvious disappointment by experimenting with one of his favorite foods: cream soup. Ready when he returned. Really hit the spot. bob didn't last long as a solo team. The truant count soon increased to two.

ingredients

base

3 T butter

3 leeks, chopped

1 big potato, diced

mushrooms

4 portobello mushroom caps

liquids

2 1/2 c veggie stock (water + 2 t veggie paste)

1 1/4 c milk

1/3 c Parmalat cooking cream (evaporated milk or real cream?)

spices

freshly ground pepper

salt to taste

instructions

1. Melt butter in saucepan, add leeks and potatoes and mushrooms. Stir to coat with butter. Cover and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes or so until beginning to soften.
2. Add stock and bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 15 to 20 minutes or until veggies are tender.
3. Stir in milk and puree with hand blender.
4. Reheat and add cream, salt and pepper.
5. Serve.

notes

1. In Italy every supermarket sells this thick cooking cream in a little carton, just enough for a single recipe. Panna da cucinare. Our heavy cream is like water in comparison. No waiting time to thicken up the panna, since it comes just right. But we can only bring over so many little cartons per year in our baggage, so we ration this closely. Parmalat has begun importing its cartoned milk, but not the cream so far. Maybe one day...
2. Oops. We forgot to read the expiration date. This stuff doesn't last very long.