Do what they say.....

Well, Steve Heimoff (www.steveheimoff.com), whose wine blog I read regularly, says Tom Wark (fermentation.typepad.com) whose wine blog I read often, says that you gotta blog daily if you want people to check out your blog.  What the heck.  I'm the new kid on the block when it comes to blogging, so I guess I'd better try it out and see what happens.

My newest book, the Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker (Ten Speed Press), comes out in March, and as winter approaches (ok, as much "winter" as we ever get in southern California), I've started work on book #6, a slow cooker soups book.  Perfect timing.  Last night was a simple little potato, onion and cream soup that I loved.  It's great to get up in the morning, look around at what's in the fridge or the garden, and figure out how you might make a soup out of it.

I remember standing in front of the Vitamix demonstration counter at Costco a few months ago, looking for all the world like Gomer Pyle, USMC, with my mouth open, muttering "gawwwllly" as the lady wearing the attractive hair net shoved a whole carrot, a tomato, some garlic with the skin still on, a celery stalk, a jalapeno pepper, some onion and a piece of avocado into the blender and churned it into "soup" in about two seconds.  Nothing cooked, nothing chopped, just a bunch a stuff all mooshed up into what actually turned out to be pretty good.  (I kept thinking of Lucy and the Vita-meta-vegamint commercial.)
And then, wouldn't you know it, I bought one....to the tune of more money than I care to divulge at the moment.

All in the interests of producing a good soup.  (BTW, I went into Costco again last week and the same lady was making a sorbet out of cucumbers and melons in the Vitamix.  Still damned good.)

It's no wonder that I'm on a soup quest here.  Let's see what I can come up with.