Hello Blog Friends!
Did you check out the Wednesday Words post about the Cook-Along? I published (with great difficulty!!) this past Wednesday. As explained in last Saturday’s post, I am now using the “new to me” laptop, generously given to me a year ago. I will not go into the details but there have been MANY postponements of the migration process and it finally took place last weekend, coinciding with my mobile charger giving out, resulting in a whole 2 days sans devices, shall we say it was challenging!! No, I am not addicted to devices but my old landline consists of 1 decrepit handset, with very low battery and it is located on the ground floor of the house so if anyone calls and I am either upstairs or in basement I frequently miss the call and the handset does not have caller ID or voicemail. Also, there is no clock upstairs and my mobile doubles as an alarm clock and flashlight, when needed, sigh.
As of Monday, I had a new charger cord and the new laptop and was trying hard to orientate myself to the latter device. Mercifully, my dear friend Jillian was scheduled to come for lunch and another Pysanky tutorial so once the next steps on her eggs were completed, she spent an extra half hour showing me how to overcome all my laptop woes.
Each day I’m figuring out more puzzles (this computer also has a French language keyboard, which come with a whole set of workarounds for different keys) and am gaining more confidence, all of which makes keeping up with my regular full workload pretty challenging.
Wednesday evening we held our monthly Day Camp committee meeting and the technology around that online event went off smoothly. Only one member had sent regrets and we covered a lot of territory so that Thursday was largely devoted to follow up business.
The Alumni Lenten Mini-Retreat is now just one week away and things like creating Google Slides and formatting the schedule, all included the ongoing learning curve. Fortunately, Eli, our Retreat Speaker was able to join me for a lunch meeting and we were able to look at my humble efforts and do some much needed editing!
To continue the ongoing theme of “lunch visitors”, today, Mae Anne will soon be joining me, so I may not have time to publish this until after she leaves as I am also, currently, finishing up the Saturday Bake. But, before I break off to deal with a batch of Dutch Rusks, we had better have this week’s recipe, which Mae Anne and I will soon be sharing, accompanied by some Fluffy Bao.
Thai Shrimp & Sweet Potato Soup
- 2½lbs. sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1” chunks
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 large garlic cloves
- 2Tbsps. coconut oil
- 2Tbsps. brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp. curry powder
- ½tsp. salt
- 1(4oz.) tin tomato paste
- 1 tin coconut milk
- 1cup peanut butter
- 2 Tbsps. Asian fish sauce
- Juice of 1 lime, plus more to taste
- 1 cup frozen small shrimp
- 1 cup frozen green beans
- Roasted peanuts, for topping
Combine the sweet potatoes, onion, garlic, oil, sugar, curry powder and salt in a 5- to 8-quart slow cooker. Add the tomato paste and 1 cup of water. Stir to combine all the ingredients and cook on low until the potatoes are quite tender, 6- 8 hours. Add the coconut milk, peanut butter and 2½ cups water to the slow cooker. Using an immersion blender, purée the soup until it is uniformly creamy OR transfer to a blender or food processor to purée. Add the lime juice, fish sauce, shrimp and green beans, stir to combine. Cook on low for about 10 minutes. Serve in bowls with peanuts on top. Serves 6.