Slow-Cooker Curried Sweet Potato Soup

The song of the first leaf blower rang out clear and true at 7:51am this past Saturday in my neighborhood. 

From The New Yorker

Here in the suburbs, leaf blowers are...how shall I put this delicately?... they are over-used. On any given day between March and November, at any daylight hour, I can usually hear one or more of them whining (I can hear one right now). The worst offenders are the gas-powered models, which are unholy loud, stinky, and polluting, but even electric leaf blowers blow around a lot of debris that makes a person sneezy, and disturb the ecosystem on which pollinators depend.

I'm selfish enough to enjoy my home's grass lawn and plenty of non-native plants, which aren't doing the Earth any favors, but I have instructed our paid lawn mowing service* not to use leaf blowers on our property. It's funny, by the way, that when I asked, the guy initially argued with me! He protested that they needed to clear off the lawn to mow it, and I said "surely your machines can mow over any leaves," and he acknowledged that was true. Then I pointed out that I would be paying them the same amount of money to skip a step, and that was that. 

We have a lot of lovely trees, which make a boatload of leaves. When they fall, I rake rather than turning to a leaf blower. Raking gives insects and caterpillars more of a fighting chance to find a new home. It's also good exercise. Choose a pleasant day, and before you go outside, put the ingredients for a cozy autumn soup in your slow cooker so you can enjoy it after all your hard work. Make it vegetarian (or better yet, vegan!), and you'll be helping the environment by saying no to meat, just as you're helping it by saying no to leaf blowers.

I recently tried "Slow-Cooker Curried Sweet Potato Soup With Coconut and Kale" (NYT Cooking), and liked it a lot. I went light on the curry paste, because some brands can be very spicy, but "Thai Kitchen" brand turned out to be mild, and I ended up adding the full amount. I had less baby spinach than I thought, so I just blended it in with the immersion blender at the end, and that worked well and gave it some pretty green flecks. 

The soup did turn out a little thick, so I would add some vegetable stock next time.

When your soup is doing its thing in the slow cooker, head out with your rake and your headphones, and listen to some music or a podcast. I always rake to The New Yorker Fiction podcast. 

*In case you are wondering, I still mow our back yard myself, using a reel mower, because it it is an environmentally friendly choice. But our front yard is steep, so we use a service.