How I tried (AND SUCCEEDED!!!) to make Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Step 1. Look up recipes online to get general idea of proportions of ingredients and common ingredients like milk vs cream, 2 teaspoons of butter or a stick (but let's be real, what doesn't taste better with a stick of butter in it), and things like that. That being said, I looked for a slow cooker recipe because I feel that it is much less maintenance. While I'm on the subject, I would just like to proclaim that adding/subtracting things from a slow cooker every 45 minutes does NOT, in my opinion, count as a slow cooker recipe. Throw everything in, put the lid on, and walk away. The recipe I stayed closest to, had TONS of SC maintenance and I'm just not okay with that.

Step 2. List of ingredients that I threw in my slow cooker

2 heads of broccoli cut up

¼ C of finely chopped baby carrots

¼ C flour mixed with 2 ½ C heavy cream until smooth, or you get tired of mixing

4 C chicken broth ( i HATE using chicken broth, for the record. Icky chemicals.)

½ stick of Butter for good measure

8 oz. shredded cheddar cheese (one giant block)

lots of salt and pepper- Don't be scared!

Directions the way I like them. Short and sweet: Throw EVERYTHING into the crock pot. Cook on high for 5 hours.

Step 3. Reflect: The recipe I followed also has this funny little step where you fish out some of the broccoli and blend the rest of the soup and then add the broccoli back in, we'll see how much energy I have for fishing and blender cleaning...

ok...so 5 hours later...the broccoli is just done enough, not mushy (so cook it longer if you like that sort of thing), and I folded and did in fact blend some of the soup together to make it look and taste more like a chowder-y soup but I just blended some big scoops of the soup, no point in trying to take out some broccoli and then tilt an entire hot crock pot of soup into a tiny blender.

Things I would change:

1. Next time I will probably cut up the broccoli a little more, it didn't cook long enough to fall apart as much as I thought it would so there were big yet fully cooked, pieces of broccoli.
2. Maybe leave the flour out. It didn't seem to really serve any purpose, or add a bunch more as thickener at the end.

Is it tasty? Let me put it this way. When I die, I want my ashes spread in this soup, and frozen in the back of the freezer. In my personal opinion, MUCH better than Panera.