Vegan Creamy Broccoli Soup and Charlie Free "Tuna" Sandwiches

I made some fresh vegetable soup this weekend.  Pretty cool, it's snowing today and all the vegetables in this soup were picked this week.  My local farmer has some green houses and quite a few goodies left in the fields. Good thing too, because what's left out there will probably freeze this week.

I did a creamy broccoli/vegetable soup.  I sauteed diced garlic, onions, carrots, a couple sliced parsnips, and lots of fresh celery including the tops and leaves in a bit of homemade rosemary oil until they were soft.  I added some sea salt, fresh ground pepper, sage, and oregano to the mix while it was cooking.  I added some vegetable stock and let it all simmer and reduce for about 20 minutes.  Then I added filtered water, I'd say about 2 lb of fresh broccoli, and the tops of the celery.  I let that simmer about 20 minutes then transferred about a third of it to my blender and added a small block of firm tofu, about 12 oz. I blended it all together until it was smooth and creamy and added it back to the soup pot.

We made a nice lunch of it along with some Charlie Free "tuna" sandwiches.  I made a mock tuna salad with whole grain tempeh, vegan mayonnaise, celery, red onion, garlic, shoyu, stone ground mustard, some of my zucchini pickles I made this summer, chopped Italian parsley, chopped garlic, and a little balsamic vinegar. Instead of lettuce, I used some raw collard greens. I made them with "Good Seed" bread from Dave's Killer Bread.  Nice Lunch, followed up with some fresh homemade vegan pumpkin pie ice cream.