- how I feel about cooking -

Cream of Carrot soup....yummm. One of my best attempts at dinner ever. I made it last week from a recipe in the fabulous cookbook pictured below - Keeping Up Cookbook. The recipe is a little labor intensive, but worth the time and effort. (Notice my pretty Ralph Lauren plate above - mentioned in previous post.)

I peeled and chopped carrots, celery and leeks - cooked them in chicken broth, then pureed the delicious smelling veggies in the blender. The soup would have been good enough, but the addition of heavy cream and sour cream made it heavenly.

As I began the blending process, I popped three freezer rolls in the oven - timed perfectly for serving the soup and hot rolls. THANKFULLY, before stirring it in, I tasted a little spoonful of the cream - just a habit I have, mainly because I love straight, unsweetened whipping cream. Ohhhh, it was sour. Really awfully icky sour.

So, completely forgetting the rolls in the oven, I took off for Lee's Marketplace to buy more cream. It's a quick trip, but not quick enough to save the rolls from being becoming hard and black and burned-up garbage.

The burnt rolls sort of killed my enthusiasm, even though the soup was delicious, and both Mike and Scott slurped it up. As I was cleaning up, there was a label maker sitting on the kitchen counter. I couldn't resist a little catharsis, so I made a label about how I really feel about cooking. I stuck it on the cookbook and there it will stay.

I really do hate cooking. No, really.


Recipe - Cream of Carrot Soup
Because of copyright, I won't type the recipe from the cookbook, but here is a recipe that is very similar from the website Easy French Food.

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped finely (I used the white & light green of four leeks)
  
• 1 1/2 pounds carrots, peeled if needed and sliced thinly
• 1 large potato, peeled and sliced thinly (I used 1 cup celery and no potato)
  
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 cup whipping cream (My recipe called for 1 cup cream & 1 cup sour cream*)
  
• salt to taste
• pepper for garnish
  

In a large sturdy soup pot (or Dutch oven), melt the butter on medium heat. Cook the onions, carrots, potato, and garlic in the butter for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chicken stock and pepper and bring the soup to a boil. Turn the heat down so that the soup is just barely bubbling. Cover the pot and cook the soup for 30 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat and allow it to cool enough so you can comfortably puree it, using either a food processor or blender. Work in small batches and watch out for hot splashing soup! Once it is pureed return the soup to a pot.

When you are done pureeing all the soup, stir in the whipping cream and season to taste with salt and additional pepper. You can further season this soup with such things as powdered dry ginger, cumin, a pinch of cayenne, or curry. All of these flavors go very nicely with carrots.

Heat the soup to serve. Serve in bowls and garnish with chopped chives. (I added a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of shredded parmesan cheese.)

Makes about 5 - 1 cup servings.

*Next time I make this - when I forget that I hate to cook - I'll try fat-free half and half and fat-free sour cream. I always use light sour cream.