Orange, carrot and mint soup

For lunch this weekend I wanted to make some sort of a carrot soup that I had never tried before.  I didn't want anything with coriander in it or red lentils, so I did a search on the GoodFood website and found this recipe for orange, carrot and mint soup.  All the ingredients were in my cupboards and I as interested to try the combination of orange, carrot and mint.  It was lovely!

Now, I have to confess that when it came to making the soup I wasn't too pushed about step 3 - it seemed like it would take a lot of time to me.  Plus it would result in extra dishes to wash which would use up even more time!!  Instead I used my hand blender to blend the soup in the pot.  It was still really smooth and velvety.

Alterations
I didn't really make any alterations to this recipe.  I had no large onion so I used 2 small onions instead, but I don't really think this could be called an alteration as this ingredient was listed already.  To lower the fat I didn't bother using the cream.  If I was to make it again I might use fry lite to further lower the fat content. 

I didn't add any salt to the soup and it tasted fine without it.  I never add salt to any of my cooking as I think it's best to leave it for people to add their own salt.

Cost
The recipe was quite cheap to make.  The carrots cost 70 cent, the onions were 10 cent (bought when they were 29 cent for a kg), the orange that I juiced was 80 cent and I have allowed 30 cent for the mint and the vegetable stock cube.  This means that the recipe costs €1.70 in total.  There is enough to do lunch for my family today and tomorrow.

My effort in a bowl!