From Our Kitchen

I have to admit, we have not been eating very healthy this week.  I miss the fresh fruits and veggies of summer, and my disappointment in the produce section is leaching over into my kitchen - causing me to loose a bit of interest in cooking.  I have been craving a nutritious meal, and came up with this soup while in the grocery store.  I've had something similar to this once, but never knew the recipe, so I came up with my own.  Meet my Sweet Potato & Spinach Soup:



Ingredients:
2 sweet potatoes chopped              8 cups fresh spinach
1 Tbsp olive oil                             4 cups chicken or beef broth
Rosemary                                    1 cup rice
Thyme

I chopped my two sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes, and cooked them with a drizzle of olive oil a few minutes until they were slightly tender.

Then I added my chicken stock.  (This turned out well, but next time I may use beef broth to give the soup a little more depth.)

Then I added my herbs- rosemary and thyme.  I also threw in a little onion powder and garlic powder since I didn't go through the trouble of chopping those fresh to flavor up my stock.

Next, I added 1 cup of rice.  This turned out to be a good amount of rice, so I wouldn't put any more than 1 cup.  After stirring in the rice, I added a few more cups of water to dilute my stock some.  Make yours however you'd like!

I let my soup simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Once the potatoes were cooked through and the rice was tender, I added my FRESH spinach.  (Fresh spinach makes all the difference in this soup!  I'm sure if you used canned or frozen it would turn into a green mess.  And if you think you don't like spinach, don't worry.  Fresh spinach doesn't have a very strong flavor, so you can barely taste it.  Those nutritious greens just slide right down!)  I knew it would cook down quite a bit, so I started with 4 cups.  That didn't seem like enough, so I added more and more.  It just kept looking like I wasn't adding any!  So by the end of things, I probably had about 8 cups of fresh spinach leaves.

It only took a few minutes for the spinach to wilt, and we were ready to fill our bowls!

Let us know if you make it and if you like it, or if you made any changes to the recipe!