"What is That Green Goop?!!!"

Well, it is a delicious creation made from an October 2000 Southern Living magazine recipe posted on myrecipes.com that was sent to me by my sister last week.  That "green goop" is called Cream of Cilantro Soup.  

My sister remembered that I had raved about a bowl of Cream of Cilantro Soup that I had over 14 years ago at a restaurant in Cozumel, Mexico.  When she saw the recipe on the website, she thought of me and sent it to me for me to try.

Now I'm not one to really go out of my way to make something new.  I tend to stick to my tried-and-true recipes and like the comfort of cooking what I already know how to cook. But this looked too good to pass up and so I wrote out the ingredients I'd need and went shopping.  (The last two times I tried something new was when I cooked my sister's "Black Bean Soup" and "Bleu Cheese Potato Salad" recipes--she's a good influence on me!).

I did do a couple of things differently when I made the soup yesterday:

1. Made a double batch
2. Used light cream cheese instead of fat-free cream cheese
3. Forgot to save some sour cream and cilantro sprigs for garnishing

Now was the soup as good as the one from Cozumel?  No.  But it was really good in its own right.  Cozumel's soup had a more subtle flavor and was not spicy.  The Southern Living recipe had a robust flavor and a "kick" to it because of the bit of ground red pepper and cumin.  So if you don't like a touch of spice, leave those out.  I think that the Cozumel recipe probably used real cream instead of cream cheese since it did not have the flavor of cream cheese in the background like the SL recipe.  Probably because they weren't trying to make a healthy version for the tourists!

So if you like cilantro, this is a recipe to try.  And a double batch probably wasn't necessary.  It made more than it looked like it was going to make.  But it will get eaten!