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Instant Pot Sweet Potato Bacon Soup

I went to NYC for a quick charity holiday party that Feel Good Foods and Friedman’s Chelsea Market hosted for Kid Care NYC. It was spectacular!

The Foodie Magician performed and left me with goosebumps from my scalp all the way down my legs (literally!).

I made one of our Good Mama famous Zucchini Spice Cakes at my mom’s house in DC and drove it up to the party for all to enjoy. I still can’t believe the cake made it to the party in one piece! A long road trip with a toddler, Uber rides in the snow...I swear the Zucchini Spice Cake is the abominable cake! It’s soooo good that it’s hard to disappoint, even if the berries and flowers on top were totally knocked off! Which they weren’t, thank God!

Our NYC road trip turned back around to DC pretty quickly. We hit the road again the morning after the party (dragging ass!) when we found out the weather in NYC was going to feel like 6 degrees! When we got back to DC in the late afternoon, Ollie was full of toddler energy and also sooooooo tired from being out of his routine. With our quick trip turn around, I hadn’t given my parents enough lead time to grab groceries for dinner that night, which turned out to be fine. I pride myself in being incredibly resourceful, especially when it comes to cooking. After all, I can make bread out of bananas! With a cranky, overtired baby pulling on my leg for a meal, quick mama!!, I scoured my mom’s kitchen and refrigerator like a robot with laser vision. I found some leftover veggies from our last trip to the farmers’ market and a couple packs of bacon. You can make anything taste good with bacon! I also found a batch of gluten free ginger snap cookies I made before we left for our trip! Dessert was done!

If you’ve ever dined at my house, you’ve probably eaten soup at my table. I’m the soup queen. Not necessarily because I’m obsessed with soup, but because soup in an Instant Pot is the easiest, tastiest, most nutritious way to deliver a full meal. Very little attention is needed and it’s eaaaasy.

For all of you Instant Pot owners who are afraid to use your Instant Pot (seriously, get over it and bust it out!!!), this is a delicious, crazy easy and super nutritious recipe!!!

Ingredients:

1 T Garlic

2 T Olive Oil

3 Red Onions, quartered

10-15 carrots, whole

6 Sweet potatoes, peeled, sliced thick

3 Bell peppers (yellow, red, orange)

1 Zucchini

1 Pink lady apple (any sweet red will do), peeled

1 pack Bacon

1 pack Turkey bacon

1 T Thyme

1 t Rosemary

1 t Oregano

1 t Terragon

1 t Onion powder

1 t Garlic powder

Directions:

1. Pour olive oil in the bottom of the Instant Pot. Press sauté and the machine will start. Add garlic and sauté until it starts to lightly brown.

2. Add onions and stir. Cool for a couple minutes until the onions soften a little.

3. Chop all the veggies and bacon while the onion is cooking and dump them into the pot! No fancy chopping techniques. Press cancel to stop sautéing to prevent garlic from burning.

4. Add water to the pot until it fills a couple inches below the highest veggie in the pot. Add herbs, salt and powders on top.

5. Close the Instant Pot lid. Select Meat/ Stew option and cook for 20 min. Make sure the pressure nozzle is closed so the pot pressure cooks the veggies until they're soft. Release the pressure after the twenty minutes.

6. Ladle the veggies and bacon, etc, into the blender, or use an immersion blender to purée the soup. (I leave some soft vegetable chunks out of the blender so my toddler can eat pieces of food as well as slurp soup, which can get messy!)

7. Serve in bowls and salt to taste. Crack fresh pepper on top before serving.

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