Potato Soup

I've been making a lot of soup lately.  Partly because in my mind, it's fall, partly because I'm happy to have my Le Creuset dutch oven as well as my copy of Peter Christian's Recipes back (chock full of great soup recipes) and partly because fresh vegetables are readily available here.

One of my favorites that I recently made is potato soup.  Even my husband liked it and he is not a soup fan.  Isn't there something so comforting and lovely about a pot full of fresh produce?

After a whirl through the food processor it becomes this.  (I bought the food processor on China's Amazon site -- it's not quite as good as my KitchenAid back home but it was a quarter of the price and gets the job done; one thing I love about China Amazon is they do Cash on Delivery.)

Here's the recipe:

Cream of Potato Soup (adapted from Peter Christian's Recipes):

1.  Cook in soup kettle, until vegetables are tender:

6 quartered medium potatoes

2 chopped celery stalks

1 quartered medium onion

3 cups chicken broth 

1 teaspoon salt

2.  Remove from stove and puree mixture in blender or food processor until smooth.

3.  Return to kettle and add 1-2 cups light cream and/or milk (depending on the consistency you want). Season with white pepper and cook gently for 15 minutes.

Easy, right?

We are planning to hunker down for a rainy weekend as a tropical storm passes through.  I wish I could say I'd be making a big pot of soup but we just realized that our propane tank is empty.

I'm okay with a rainy, lazy weekend as I injured my ankle this week and I'm pretty much laid up on the couch.  I twisted my ankle the other night while stepping off a curb and found myself sprawled out in the middle of a street in China.  I was holding Dag when it happened.  Fortunately, he was fine.  Chris helped us both up and we sat on the curb for awhile.  Dag was crying hysterically even though he wasn't hurt. I was sort of in shock over the whole event, including the fact that I was sitting on the curb of a busy intersection, clutching my leg.  My ankle was instantly swollen and bruised.  It looked and felt terrible.  

The next morning we went to the doctor's office around the corner (where we knew they spoke English).  Chris literally carried me there because I couldn't walk. People looked at us strangely.  The doctor sent a nurse with us to the hospital for x-rays. Talk about service!  She even hailed the cabs for us.  I think it would have been impossible for us to navigate the hospital without a Chinese speaker.  She had to go to several different windows to obtain various slips of paper.  She shuttled me off to one area to have someone look at my ankle, then back to the waiting room while more slips of paper were obtained and then finally to the x-ray area where we somehow skipped in front of everyone waiting in line. The hospital itself was something out of a 1950's movie: nurses in white uniforms and hats, glass bottles containing who-knows-what, white brick walls.  It was disconcerting to see a trail of blood from the sidewalk up to the hospital entrance. But we persevered and the x-ray revealed no fractures, fortunately.  Back at the doctor's office, he bandaged the ankle up and advised me to keep it iced and elevated.  I can walk a little bit now (albeit quite awkwardly and not far).  It was certainly an adventure.  But one that I could have lived without.  

In other topics, my friend Chloe has a great giveaway on her blog for a beautiful children's book -- along with an interview with the author.  Check it out and enter the giveaway here.  Good luck!