Rustic Italian Soup

By Natalie Norman

Early autumn is a wonderful time to harvest easy-to-grow vegetables from your garden like peppers, squash, carrots, and cauliflower. If you don’t have your own garden or it’s not the right season, the budget-friendly ingredients in this soup are easily found in most supermarkets everywhere.

All these yummy veggies are featured in this raw vegan soup, blended to warm, savory, hearty perfection in the Blendtec blender. Thanks to Blendtec’s powerful motor, you can simply extend your blending time and turn fresh raw vegetables into tasty vegetable soups without ever having to cook!

You can decide how raw you want this recipe to be. As you will see below, you have the option of lightly baking or steaming the acorn squash. You are also free to lightly cook the other vegetables according to your unique dietary needs or culinary tastes. The beauty of the Blendtec is that it allows you to work with either cooked or raw ingredients, producing a lovely and delicious result every time.

In addition to boasting simple, yet mouthwatering ingredients, this soup is packed with hearty plant-based nutrition from cruciferous vegetables that may help to prevent cancer. Likewise, the spicy goodness of peppers (caused by a unique compound known as “capsaicin”) has been studied for its potential to combat cancer too. Vegetables also contain high amounts of fiber, which appears to reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Bursting with fresh garden flavors, this vegan soup will become a go-to recipe any time you’re craving Italian comfort food without any of the guilt.

Enjoy!

Rustic Italian Soup

Ingredients

2-3 cups of water, or as needed
2 carrots
2 cups of cauliflower
1 seeded & peeled acorn squash, either raw, lightly baked or steamed
2 seeded jalapeno peppers
1 cup sweet red pepper or red bell pepper
¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes
1 tbsp Italian seasoning
1 clove of garlic or about 1/8 tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp onion powder
1 pinch of pink salt (optional)

Directions

1. Add ingredients to WildSide+ jar in order listed and secure lid. Select Soup. Blend until smooth and warm in Blendtec blender.
2. Stop the blender, taste, and carefully adjust water and seasonings as desired.

There is no wrong way to make this soup. Simply make it the way YOUR taste buds prefer it!

When preparing raw food meals, all raw vegetables and fruits taste slightly different, so it’s important to experiment with what tastes best to you.

About the Author:

Natalie Norman is a certified advanced raw vegan educator and plant-based lifestyle expert who shed half her body weight by adopting a raw food diet. She then founded www.natalienorman.com, a multiple award-winning website where she shares easy raw food recipes, weight loss tips, support, a free newsletter, and much more. Connect with Natalie Norman on her official Twitter account @natalienorman, on Instagram and Pinterest @rawnatalie, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RawFoodRecipes.