On a recent Friday night trip to the grocery store, the snowy-white heads of cauliflower caught my eye in the produce aisle. They looked very fresh without a blemish on them, the price was right and so into my cart it went. On the commute home, my mind was on that fresh cauliflower and what my intentions were for it, since that hadn’t been on my original grocery list or menu for the upcoming week. I had bought a pretty good-sized head and so it was going to be enough for several meals. The one thing I was most hungry for was homemade Cauliflower Cheese Soup, however most recipes for that soup are pretty high in fat and sodium, so I begrudgingly let go of that idea.

The snowy weekend resulted in a little more time than I was expecting at home, so I was perusing the cookbooks looking for a way to modify a soup recipe to use that cauliflower in a little more healthful way. After all, cauliflower is pretty low in calories, sodium and fat, but most of the recipes had varying amounts of broth, canned soups, bacon, cream, butter and cheese in the recipe. I looked through all the recipes in my church cookbooks, looked online and asked my mom for her best Cauliflower Soup recipe and then I started experimenting. Certainly one pot of soup does not need cream and butter and bacon! I wanted the emphasis and taste to be on the cauliflower and not on the base. So as it snowed and snowed outside, I cooked up a couple versions of Cauliflower Cheese Soup and came up with a makeover recipe that I thought turned out pretty good. Following is my simple, makeover recipe:

Cauliflower Cheese Soup

Ingredients:

1/4cup shredded carrots

8 ounces fresh cauliflower

1/4 cup chopped or grated onion

1 can (10 1/2 oz) condensed cream of potato soup

1 cup skim milk

3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Method:

Rinse cauliflower and break into smaller florets. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Add cauliflower and carrots and boil for five minutes to al dente stage (boil longer for it to be softer). Drain water. Put the cauliflower, carrots and onion in a larger kettle. Add the can of potato soup and skim milk. Stir. Heat thoroughly over low heat but do not bring to a boil. Add the shredded cheese and let it melt. Stir and serve. If too thick, add more milk.

Makes four servings.

Nutritional information (per serving): 185 calories, 8 grams of fat, 660 mg sodium.

So now you may be thinking that 660 mg still sounds like quite a bit of sodium. The canned soup and cheese do contribute a significant amount of sodium. However, when I ate this soup at my meal, I had one bowl of soup and I also had a 3 ounce piece of chicken breast and a serving of fruit, both of which are low in sodium and fat. This meal combination included all the food groups and when you consider the nutrient content of the whole meal rather than just that one item, it evens out.

This soup base could easily be adapted for other vegetables as well, such as broccoli or asparagus. I don’t need another snowy weekend to experiment, however. I am more than ready for this winter and snow to be over and to see those little spears of asparagus poking through the ground!

Cheryl Rude is registered dietitian at Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center.