On some nights, I have a brilliant idea for dinner. Other nights – I’d venture to say most nights – I whine “what do you want for dinner?” to Mark and stare blankly into the refrigerator assessing the vegetable situation. Tonight was one of the latter nights. Bizarrely, I think I ended up making vegan Spam, but you’ll hear more about that tomorrow. I had to put it in the refrigerator to constrict. Yeah, I know that doesn’t make any sense, but welcome to my world. Anyway, foraging around in the crisper drawers of the refrigerator, I found a head of a cabbage, celery root, and carrots. All of which I decided was going into a soup to accompany some barbeque beans suggested by my friend Abbott George.

Creamy Potato Carrot Soup

My apologies for the photograph you are about to be subjected to. Apparently I forgot how to focus. I usually take a couple of shots of the ingredients to make sure at least one turns out, but apparently not tonight.

4-5 large shallots, or 1 large onion, chopped
1/2 celery root, grated, or 1 stalk celery, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
4-5 red potatoes, diced
4 leaves cabbage, chopped (I used savoy)
6 cups vegan broth or stock
2 Tbsp vegan “bacon” bits
1 bay leaf
freshly ground pepper to taste

In a soup pot or Dutch oven, heat some olive oil, then add the shallots or onions and saute for a couple of minutes.

Add the carrots (my carrot was yellow, don’t be confused!), celery root or celery, and garlic; saute for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the potatoes and cabbage.

Add the broth or stock, potatoes, cabbage, bay leaf, and bacon bits. Season with pepper to taste.

Bring to a boil, cover, lower heat, and simmer for half an hour or until vegetables are soft.

Remove the bay leaf and puree, either using an immersion blender or in batches in a regular blender, as smooth or chunky as you like.

Serve. I sprinkled a little parsley in the middle for the photo because I’m classy.

Mark’s assessment of the soup: “It may look like puke, but it tastes like happy.” It’s like I said: we’re classy.

Here are the barbeque beans. It was essentially just soy beans in homemade barbecue sauce.

I complained last time about Brachtune (who is currently sitting on my right arm – making typing extremely difficult – and purring loudly) sitting on my laptop, which has been her new favorite thing to do. When she signed me out of Ubuntu and then left my user name a cryptic “while you were out” message (which, again, I didn’t even know you could do), I decided it was the last straw and I set her up her own little pseudo-laptop. Here it is:

I took a heated cat pad that my mother gave me a while ago (I believe to combat the problem of Tigger sleeping on our laptops) and stuck it into a hooded cat bed that I bought Brachtune as a get-well present when her leg was broken earlier this year. She’s been practically living in it since.

This freed up my reading chair for Tigger.

In other news, I scored an awesome antique seltzer bottle at the antique store today, although I was sad to realize at home that it’s missing a part that holds the charger. Fortunately I found one on the cheap on eBay, although it’s coming from the UK so it may take a little while to get here. If you don’t hear from me after a week or so, it’s quite possible Ive managed to blow myself up in a horrible CO2/exploding bottle accident. Honestly, “seltzer bottle” seems like one of those things, like “kitchen torch”, that I shouldn’t be allowed to have, but fortunately for me you don’t have to pass a klutz test to buy one. Let the fizzy drinks begin!