Cooking with Emily

Last night I decided to cook. This is something I hardly ever do anymore. On occasion I make an omelet on a Saturday morning, but I'm pretty much in a microwave rut. I had found a recipe last month for sweet potato soup that looked tempting, so I saw it as an opportunity. The following is a step-by-step guide for you to follow if you feel like duplicating my experience.

Step one: Look at the recipe to figure out what you need to buy. This was pretty easy. I basically just needed to pick up the potatoes, celery, and apple. (We have plenty of apples at the house, but we didn't have the specified type, and I wanted to follow the recipe to the t.)

Step two: Start heating the sweet potatoes in the oven as you prepare the rest of the ingredients. This is where it became a little tricky. The potatoes weren't a problem, but upon looking at the recipe closer, I saw it asked for a stalk of celery. I originally thought a stalk was one singular branch or stick you pull off of the whole bunch, but when asking my mom for clarification, she said to use the whole bunch. At the time it didn't occur to me to seek further clarification online. So I dutifully cut up a ridiculous amount of celery, along with a Granny Smith apple and an onion.

After looking at a large saucepan exploding with celery, I rethought what I was doing. It didn't look right. And besides, the recipe I was making was called "Roasted Sweet Potato and Apple Soup," not "Roasted Sweet Potato and a %$@# Load of Celery." I decided to take out a sizable amount of celery before adding the partially baked sweet potatoes, but there was still about half to two-thirds of the original amount left.

Step three: Add the sweet potatoes and water, continuing to heat. Easiest step. Anytime I get to smell sweet potatoes and sneak some is good. And scooping their insides out of the skin was easier than I thought it would be.

Step four: Blend. I used my cheap handheld blender, which I bought in the spring for fruit smoothies. It blended well, except for spraying the hot liquid all over the counter, my shirt, my arms, and my face. After a while I developed a technique that proved less hazardous.

Step five: Taste. I took a bite. It tasted okay, but the celery was overpowering. The whole point was to have sweet potato soup, not celery soup with some sweet potatoes added in. The sweet potato coloring was there, as well as some of the texture, but I basically made "Celery Soup (w/ a little sweet potato)." Mom had a whole bowl before going to bed and said it was good.

Step six: Clean up and sit back. I gave the recipe another lookover and noticed it claimed to take one hour, start to finish. Nope. It was definitely over two hours. But next time, with the new knowledge of what a "stalk" is, I should do better.