Cream of Cabbage Soup

This is very easy to make at lunch and leave in the crock pot for several hours until dinner.  The cabbage needs at least 3 hours to cook down.

 Using extra firm tofu, drain and cube it.

 

In your crock pot or large pot with a lid, pour in 4 cups of stock and add the tofu cubes.
If you have time, allow to tofu to sit covered in the stock for an hour or so, heat off, just to soak up some flavor.

You can use vegetable or chicken broth, this time I used Thai cooking stock made with lemon grass and mild chili peppers.  Peppers themselves give my stomach fits, but in stock, they don't bother me.

 

Turn the heat on and start the stock simmering and add a container of cream cheese cooking sauce, they come in several flavors, so just pick one you like.  Or, omit for dairy-free soup.

Once the cream cheese had softened enough to spread a little, add the rest of the veggies:

A bag of frozen peas and a bag of frozen okra.  Fresh works just as well, but frozen is that much easier if you are in a hurry.

If you use frozen okra, look through it for stem ends!  Those are no fun to bite into later.

Chop up a small head of lettuce-something just larger than a softball is a good size in relation to the cream and bagged veggies.  Throw it on top and put the lid on and let everything warm up before you stir it.  If you have to leave for the day and plan to let it cook, go ahead and stir at this point, it's just that frozen veggies and cold cabbage are hard to mix around.

Now it's all mixed together, add a little salt and pepper and put the lid on.  Let it cook at least 3 hours so the cabbage will be soft.  This is surprisingly good, since we came up with it one evening trying to use up a few things before they expired.  I think we had been given a container of the cream cheese cooking sauce and did not know what else to do with it.

It has become a regular staple around here, other than the cream cheese, there's no fat in it and other than salt added yourself, the sodium content can be kept well in hand, too.  Loads of veggies and fiber!  We like it with corn in there, too.