Funny story about this soup.

Well, I mean as funny as a story about soup can get.

A long, long time ago in a land far, far away, I had a stall at a festival in town to tout my wares. market stalls are STRESSFUL, especially when you sell food that doesn’t keep. Over the years, I’ve lost count of how many markets I’ve been to where I spent the rest of the evening depositing leftovers to homeless shelters and wanting to cry at the lost money. This, by the way, is not the funny part of the story.

Anyway, I was doing this market as a bit of a favour, and I just had the teeny tiny matter of a massive lunch catering job to get out of the way first, so all the stuff I was going to sell at the market was just sort of turfed into the van. Including the soup.

The soup that was on the promotional materials.

The soup that I knew was going to sell well.

I did put stuff in crates and tubs and involved ratchet straps which were probably entirely unnecessary but I’m married to Mr P and his adoration of a ratchet strap has sort of rubbed off on me a bit and this manifests in stressful situations where I think an extra ratchet strap surely can’t cause any harm so I literally buckle up.

And there I was, after an insane catering job, pegging it into town and every single light on the Albert Bridge was green and I had time on my side and as I pegged it round the corner onto Victoria Street, I could smell it.

The soup.

The soup that was on the promotional materials.

The soup that I knew was going to sell well.

And so I pulled up at Custom House Square, and opened the van doors, and there it was, all over the back of the van, seeping into the very ratchet straps. The soup.

The soup that was on the promotional materials.

The soup that I knew was going to sell well.

My heart sank, but I went with positive mental attitude, and the possibility that maybe the soup wouldn’t sell that well at all.

Except everybody kept asking me about the soup. My social media was telling me people were coming to the event just for sodding soup. So I threw some money at my brother for beers, got into the van and found myself in some kind of supermarket sweep situation.

Or maybe even soup-ermarket sweep.

And I grabbed what I could and I threw it all in a pot and twenty minutes later out came a hundred odd portions of this soup and it got ratchet strapped into the van and carefully driven over the Albert Bridge (red lights this time)

But somehow it tasted amazing and it sold well and I didn’t have to bring any leftovers anywhere at all because there were none.

The best part of this soup, though, is just how quickly sweet potato cooks. I don’t even need to be making a hundred portions these days to appreciate that. I do hope you enjoy.

Grab some sweet potatoes. Don’t worry if they are a bit off the weight, the only reason I wrote it down is because sweet potatoes have the habit of being either teeny tiny little things or big massive yokes that actually weigh more than my child did when he was born.