HelloFresh sent me a scary soup recipe this week. Curried Freekeh Soup with Kale and Sweet Potatoes. I’m not a soup fan, and the kale makes me very apprehensive. I’ve tried kale chips in the past, and didn’t enjoy them at all. They tasted like a garden died in my mouth. I also learned when making Hearty Minestrone last week that I don’t like mushy potatoes. They are disgusting, but I ate around them and survived.

I started cooking this week’s soup by heating olive oil in a large pot to cook the onions and potatoes. Next I needed to add 5 cups of water, which is when I discovered my idea of a large pot is not the same as HelloFresh’s. I frantically dug through my cabinet looking for something that would hold everything, and finally pulled out a slow cooker. Initially I was thrilled — isn’t soups what slow cookers are made for?

I transferred the ingredients I was working with to the slow cooker and turned up the heat. Next I jumped online to find out how to convert the stovetop recipe to a slow cooker recipe so I’d know when to add the other ingredients to the pot, and realized I can’t eat for another four hours. According to the chart below from One Good Thing by Jillee, my soup (with its 13 minute simmer) will need 4 – 6 hours in the slow cooker. (Jillee’s article has lots of helpful tips for stove to slow cooker conversions. She also has the conversion chart available as a PDF.)

One Good Thing by Jillee

I’m trying to decide how to handle this. Do I wait several hours before eating?  By then I’ll be starving and if the soup is horrible I know I’ll use that as an excuse to run to Whataburger.

Maybe I should have cold cereal now and another meal late tonight. Or maybe I should just quit now and order a pizza, because I’d rather have pizza now than Whataburger later. See how I’m justifying pizza by using a soup that may or may not be edible?

I hate it when my plans fall through like this because it’s so easy to fall back on old habits. HelloFresh was supposed to save me from this hell.

(Over four hours later)

The soup is finished, and I’m finished with it. It’s very bland, yet peppery thanks to the red pepper flakes. Nothing helped, not garlic, not a ton of salt. I managed to choke down about half a serving with the help of 35 saltines. The remainder is going down the drain. I can’t see myself eating this dull pepper water two nights in a row.