Leeks!

At the farmer's market on Thursday, I bought some leeks. Why? They looked good? I don't know. It was more of an impulse buy. I could not even tell you a recipe that included leeks at the time, let alone I have never eaten one. My cousin said that potato and leek soup was delicious - I just need to be sure to rinse out every layer of the leek so I can remove the sand and prevent my food from being grainy.

I spent some time researching leek receipes. It seems like potato and leek soup is the classic way to go. I wanted to go a fancier route, so I turned to foodnetwork.com, which has turned into my go-to source for good recipes lately. I decided to make Rachel Ray's BLT and P (bacon, leek, tomato, and potato) Soup.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/blt-and-p-bacon-leek-tomato-and-potato-soup-recipe/index.html

The receipe says that it takes 25 minutes and is "easy." The instructions were pretty easy to follow, but I didn't have all my food laid out when I started, so I pulled the ingredients from my fridge or pantry as I needed them. If I had everything already chopped or had a sous chef, this reciepe could be fast, but I don't know if I could have this on the table within half an hour of starting. I spent about an hour making the soup this time. There was a lot of vegetable chopping; I should have used my food processor. It would have been really helpful to have seen some cut all these vegetables since they have pretty specific suggestions for their shapes and sizes. Overall, it was a good recipe and a very filling soup (I only used 1 quart of vegetable stock and used the entirity of the diced tomatoes and juices). There are a lot of vegetables in this, so it makes for a very healthy alternative. (Even with the bacon - yum - bacon!) And this much better and richer than soup from a can!