Creamy Asparagus

At last a spring soup! This week was cloudy and cool, giving me the perfect motivation to cook up my own take on a soup from the spring chapter of Rosbottom's Sunday Soup. Saturday I stumbled by a roadside farm stand out in Howard County and picked up a bunch of locally grown asparagus. Sunday I cooked and blended the base of the soup. I found that rice was the secret ingredient, cooked right in the chicken broth as the veggies softened, and helpful in thickening the consistency. On Monday, I sauteed some asparagus I had set aside with a little olive oil and toasted almonds before serving. The garnish was my own invention and made for a pretty picture and a little CRUNCH!