Turkey soup

It was lately made clear to me that I need a modest reduction in my salt intake, and the easiest target was my weekday sandwich. A few slices of cured meat plus a slice of cheese plus bread turns out to be rather a lot of salt.

So I had the idea of making large batches of soup and then freezing them in individual portions. Still convenient, still tasty, and as a bonus I can try out some recipes I've been wanting to try since forever. Like this one from last week:

2 cups cubed pre-cooked turkey breast
5 cups no-salt-added chicken broth (since the turkey breast had the right amount of salt already)
1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 parsnip, ditto
1 turnip, ditto
2 carrots, ditto
1 onion, ditto
1 teaspoon dried thyme

The local farmers' market starts up at the beginning of February, so I was able to find parsnips, onions, and carrots there. The local mega-supermarket had the rest.

This was my first time cooking with sweet potatoes. My mom likes baked yams, but I found them disgusting as a kid. At the supermarket, I was confronted with two labeled varieties with no information about which might work best for a given purpose, so I defaulted to getting the more brightly colored one (because I am secretly still six years old). When I got home and decided to look at the general information on sweet potatoes in Fannie Farmer, I discovered I had actually gotten the hated yams. But chopped up and cooked in soup, they're okay!

I think I have cooked a parsnip before, but I didn't remember anything about a peeled one smelling like fancy soap.

The smell of thyme was so powerful after adding it that I was afraid it was going to overwhelm everything else, but the actual taste balanced out fine. Root vegetables have more flavor than I ever realized. Definitely making this one again.