The Covered Dish - Strawberry Soup

What a wonderful weekend on the home-front. We celebrated what would have been my parents’ 68th wedding anniversary. Grandkids and great-grandchildren filled the house on Saturday. We surrounded my dad, Jerry, with lots of love and well-deserved family time. The photos were great, wish I could have run them in the column. I would turn around and do it all over again just so we could all be together!

I’ve been trying to think of some dishes that might bring interest to your Easter Dinner this year. This is absolutely terrible to say, but I ‘think’ this is my Strawberry Soup recipe?? I started out in 2009 with a local gal’s recipe and then I tweaked it to my liking. I’m 98% percent sure this one is truly mine.
For something a bit unique you could open up Easter dinner with small cups of the ‘cold’ strawberry soup. Believe me, it is yummy and rich with all the heavy cream! Garnishes will be easy to design with fresh berries and perhaps a pinch of mint. It can be made the night before and refrigerated, freeing up more time for the remaining Easter dishes.
This soup would also be good to use for a luncheon, served with a few finger sandwiches, teacakes, scones and tea. If you really need to add calories you could turn it into a milkshake by adding ice cream to the soup and blending. Also; a dash of protein powder would beef it up for our senior adults, or those needing to rebuild their strength and weight.
So far I haven’t started planning the Easter Dinner. ‘Hopefully’ our son, Phillip will get home for the weekend. Dad is staying with us for a week or two so I’m busy making dishes that are some of his favorites. He has requested homemade hot rolls, but not my recipe! Actually it’s my Aunt’s recipe and her daughter just sent it to me today. I’ll probably save those for next weekend. This weekend we had several of his favorites, fried chicken, frog-eye salad, biscuits, gravy, potatoes, greens and more and more. Like I said, it was a great weekend. Now we have all those leftovers to enjoy!!

Many are busy planting, cleaning the gardens and preparing the home-front for the new season. It is always wonderful to see all the new growth. Here in the Ozarks it also means the start of the ‘yellow’ season.
Enjoy, Enjoy, Simply yours, The Covered Dish. wwwthecovereddish.com

Strawberry Soup

1 cup orange juice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup powdered sugar

24 ounces vanilla yogurt, not Greek

Scant 1/4 cup white/clear vanilla

24 ounces frozen, sweetened strawberries

3 cups cream

In a blender or food processor mix all of the ingredients together except for the cream. Remove from the blender and by hand whisk in the cream. This will make about one gallon of strawberry soup. The ingredients will not separate after refrigeration, however it does thicken up somewhat, so whisk lightly before serving. Regular vanilla may also be used; I like white/clear because it doesn’t darken the dish whatsoever. In order to fit this in a blender you will have to do half of the recipe at a time. A half batch will easily serve 4-5 persons full portions.
Options: You can use lighter yogurts and fat free creams if you desire. Greek yogurt is an option, however when this recipe was written this was not a choice!