vegan zuppa toscana

My friend and I love Olive Garden. It's our go to place for lunch when we all meet up. The problem with Olive Garden is that they don't have many "healthy" choices. Quite a few of my friends are into healthy foods; vegan, vegetarian, organic, you name it.

 

I found a recipe on Pinterest for Zuppa Toscana and Eric and I made it a few weekends ago. The problem with it was that it was more Indian than Italian. It had chili powder and curry in it, so it wasn't like the Zuppa Toscana I've grown to love from Olive Garden.

 

My solution to this little dilemma was to make my own Zuppa Toscana recipe. I took the Indian Zuppa Toscana recipe and changed out the spices and a few other things to make my own. Man, am I glad I did. The second Zuppa Toscana attempt was amazing, delicious, excellent, etc.

Here's my recipe.

 

Zuppa Toscana

 

Ingredients:

1.5 tsp fennel seeds
1.5 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tbsp parsley leaves
salt
pepper
1 large onion
3 garlic cloves
1.5 cups cashew cream (instructions to make this below)
3 - 5 potatoes
roughly chopped kale
2 zucchini
1 yellow squash
2 boxes vegetable broth

 

Sauté onion until soft in bottom of large pot. Add in garlic and sauté with salt and pepper for a minute. Add in chopped potatoes, zucchini , and yellow squash. Mix in fennel, red pepper, parsley. Add vegetable broth and kale. Cover and cook until potatoes are soft. Right before you pull it off the stove add the cashew cream in. Stir everything together and serve.

 

It goes excellent with some yummy homemade whole wheat bread! Eric and I try to make some every weekend.
 

 

Cashew Cream

 

Ingredients:

1 - 1.5 cups cashews

1 cup water

 

Boil cashews until soft. Food process or blend with 1 cup water until creamy. All chunks should be gone.
 

If you like Olive Garden or Zuppa Toscana, you should definitely try this recipe. Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear how it turns out for everyone else.