Powegian Potato Soup From Fortcoming Cookbook

American Soup

POWEGIAN POTATO SOUP

INGREDIENTS

2 russet potatoes
2 red potatoes
2 garlic cloves
2 celery stalks
1 tablespoons olive oil
1 10.5 ounce can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 10.5 can filled with water
1/2 teaspoon Vegetable MagicTM spice
1/2 teaspoon parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon chives

PREPARATION

Wash and peel all potatoes. (This isn’t all that fun. Do you have a ready source of labor such as a nine-year old boy around?)
Cut potatoes into bits no larger than an inch on any side. Mince potato bits and garlic cloves. Devein celery stalks of those long threads by breaking stalk in half and pulling off exposed silky threads. Minced deveined celery.

Put olive oil in frying pan. Add minced garlic and celery. Saute potato bits, cloves and celery at medium high for about 5 minutes.

Empty condensed cream of chicken into large soup pot. Fill empty cans with water and add to pot. Add minced potato, vegetable spice, parsley, and chives. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes, then add sauteed garlic and celery. Stir frequently. Cook on warm heat for 55 minutes. Stir every minute or so to prevent burning.

TIDBITS

1) The wild form of celery is smallage.

2) I have trouble visualizing vast open fields filled from horizon to horizon with wild celery.

3) I don’t think settlers who traveled the Oregon Trail during the 1840s came across great vistas of wild celery.

4) Certainly, the Donner Party didn’t.

5) Parties often have celery sticks as appetizers.

6) The modern, party, celery stick was first cultivated in Michigan in 1874.

7) Which means most Americans forgot to celebrate the modern celery stick’s centennial. I know I did.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.