Broccoli Soup and the end of my vegan challenge

Monday marked the end of my 2-week vegan challenge.  As a trial, it wasn't too difficult.  Perhaps the only bad thing was living in a small town, the restaurants and ready-made meals aren't very vegan friendly, thus I forced myself to cook more, which is good.  I was worried about not getting certain vitamins so I took vitamin supplements every day and I bought calcium-fortified soya milk and whatnot.

I weighed myself, and I think I've lost 1kg.  I don't know my exact weight before the challenge though.  I should've measured my blood pressure and had a whole check-up before, so I could compare it to now.  It was definitely interesting -- it forced me to be a lot more adventurous with my cooking, though being the first two weeks of school I ate out a lot (making ridiculous requests in restaurants such as asking for feta salads without the feta) and I ended up eating the same things over and over again.  But I may do this again, next time for a whole month, and I'll weigh myself and actually document how much I'm paying for everything as well.  Anyway, if you haven't seen already, I've posted my vegan challenge meals on Facebook.

So this was the first proper meal I had after my vegan challenge -- I know, it's not steak or anything, and it's actually almost vegan.  It can be easily made vegan, I simply used a bit of butter and flour at the end to thicken the soup, but that's not necessary, and you can add soya milk at the end rather than dairy milk.

Serves 2
Ingredients
1/2 large white onion
1/2 large carrot
1 stalk of celery
1 small head of broccoli
1/2 tbsp flour
1/2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp milk/half-and-half/cream

Method
Finely chop the onion, carrot and celery.
Heat some oil in a pot and add the onion carrot and celery.  Fry for about 10 minutes.
Add the broccoli and 2 cups of hot water
When the water boils, turn down the heat, cover and let simmer for 15 minutes.
Cream the butter with the flour and add, bit by bit, to the pot, whisking everything in.  Let cook for 5 more minutes.
Puree everything in a blender/food processor with the addition of milk/half-and-half/cream.  Season and serve.