Broccoli Cheese Soup
Dish: Entree
Taste: 5
Preparation: 5
Recipe: 4
Cost: $$
Repeat? Yes
http://soup.allrecipes.com/AZ/BroccoliCheeseSoupIII.asp
Taste: We’ve made this soup a number of times before, so surprisingly enough we like the taste. It’s also a frequent inclusion when we take soup to our friends annual halloween party. Good taste, cheesey. Broccoli is barely noticeable, tastewise, unless you put in a lot. Which we do sometimes
Preparation: Not bad on prep. Hardest part, honestly, is the thickening agent and then shredding the cheese. Which isn’t hard, just tedious 
Supposed to sautee the broccoli in the broth, but I use a crockpot, so it cooks for a couple hours before eating anyway, so i figure they get soft that way.
Recipe: It’s actually a good recipe, and I’d give it a 5. But I do tweak it a bit, so it has to “take the hit.” First thing is that I don’t sautee/boil the broccoli. More, though, skip the thickening (corn starch) entirely. I use one I got from another soup: two sticks of butter (1 cup), melt. Add 1/2cup of flour, stir it in, then slowly add/mix another 1/2 in. May not get the full cup in, you want to make sure that the mixture is still fluid, kind of thick but not breaking or clumping. If it starts to break up, you really need to restart. And we throw in Vegetable Broth instead of chicken 
Big change — First couple times I did this I misinterpreted the amount of cheese. It wants 2C. 1C is 8oz, so 1lb is 2C. Except I eventually noticed (this morning) that the taco cheese is 2C, and it’s an 8oz bag. So I’ve been doubling the cheese all this time. Everyone likes it, so I feel no compulsion to change
Probably more crockpot related than anything else: I only use ONE quart (2 2cup cans) of broth, since it’s not going to evaporate that much compared to normally it’s a stovetop recipe.
Cost: Cheese. Milk. Broccoli. Probably close to 10$. But it is a 12 serving recipe, so close to a dollar a bowl. Cheese is probably the biggest cost