Another new ingredient to try is avocado. I’ve found that they go great with the V8-inspired vegetable blend that I mentioned previously. The avocado bulks it up a bit, and you get a sort of cold vegetable soup that is nice to eat with a spoon (rather than drink from a glass). If you’re serving the soup, you can spruce it up with a little garnish, such as some lightly toasted nuts.
One other comment on the vegetable soup: in my previous post I said “salt to taste.” The salt really balances the flavors out, so you shouldn’t shy away from it. I used to avoid salting my food because I was concerned about the negative health impacts, but upon further consideration I realized that adding a pinch of salt to a dish is really not that much sodium–it pales in comparison to what is in packaged foods or restaurant foods. If you have really high blood pressure you might want to be more careful, but I think it’s easy to get overly scared of sodium.
And speaking of balancing flavors, don’t forget the lemon or vinegar!
Update: You can reduce the introduction of air bubbles by blending everything except avocado first. Then add avocado and blend briefly (~5 sec). The avocado is so soft that it does not need to be blended for very long, and a shorter blend time will introduce less air. You can of course use the air bubble removal trick, but I often make cold avocado soups pretty thick, which makes it harder to get rid of the air bubbles.
Instead of regular table salt, try himalayan salt instead. One of the many benefits of this salt is that it supposedly aids in lowering blood pressure.
I would take that supposed benefit with a large grain of you-know-what.
this is sin