We’re on day two of something called a “wintry mix” which I suspect if I lived in one of those places where one was forced to wear shorts and sunglasses in January, eating food plucked recently from the ground (pea tendrils, anyone?) I’d imagine constituted a fun day of mixed winter activities, like snowfall fights followed by ice skating and then, if you’re not too tuckered out, some hot cocoa before you head home. Alas, a “wintry mix” is the precise reason my only current goal in life is to flee to someplace tropic and sandy.





And make soup. Except, me and soup have been on unstable terms this year. I know its the “right” thing to eat this time of year but my relationship with soup has been near-irreparably damaged by too many bowls of vegetables boiled to death in an oversalted broth, soups assaulted with so much cream that whatever healthy things in there cannot be tasted, and in what I imagine had to have been some sort of practical joke, a soup I ordered from from a cafe a few weeks ago that tasted, smelled and sloshed about like freezer-bitten spinach pureed in water. (It cost $6.95.)

So I was almost done with soup when I starting thinking about baked potatoes and how it’s been too long since I had a great one and how awesome it would be to make a soup that embodied everything you liked about baked potatoes — including, should you dare, cheddar, sour cream, bacon bits and chives — but in a bowl. And I became obsessed, thought about nothing else until I could bring home a pile of Russets and got to work.







The result might be the first soup I have been excited about in a very long time. It’s thick and intensely baked potato-ish and although it is a lot of fun to make a piled-on spud of your bowl, the soup can stand on its own, neither immensely unhealthy or lacking in flavor without toppings. Plus it’s hearty, warming enough to make me forget all about the fact that I remembered — as my foot was halfway descended in a bottomless pit of street slush this morning — that I wasn’t wearing waterproof boots. Warming enough that you might decide you need one less layer. Warming enough that the prospect of spring being more than two months off is ever-so-slightly more bearable. Not quite pea tendrils, but it’ll do.

One year ago: Black Bean Soup with Toasted Cumin Seed Crema, Cranberry Syrup (on an Intensely Almond Cake)

Two years ago: Light Wheat Bread and Clementine Cake

Three years ago: Pickled Carrot Sticks and Chicken Caesar Salad

Four years ago: Artichoke Ravioli with Tomatoes, Leek and Mushroom Quiche