Well, the sweetpotato/butternut soup was a big hit. Everyone loved it. The immersion blender stick worked GREAT, and I stopped blending just at the point where there wer a few nice little chunks of potato still here and there in the soup. A few chunks are nice. I had plenty left over after 6 people ate it as a dinner. I love sweet potatoes too.

I just threw some stuff in at noon today to start a lentil soup dinner.
First I cooked a few cut up bacon strips in a pan until crisp, and then added some leftover chopped ham and 1/2 chopped onion and 1/2 chopped red pepper and some garlic to the bacon- I browned this mess all together, then threw it in the crockpot along with:
1 pound of cleaned dry lentils
1 large carrot chopped
6 cups water
3 chicken bouillion cubes
salt & pepper
a few shakes of cumin (sorry Suzie!)

I'll leave it on low for about 6 hours and check after about 4 hours to see if it needs more water.
This was a really easy one for me, because the ham was from someones potluck a few nights ago that I took home, and the chopped onion and red pepper were already chopped as previous topping for the sweet potato soup, and I always keep some cut pieces of bacon in the freezer to use like this, and then toss in a pan frozen and the bacon separates and cooks up quickly. What I do is i'll buy a package of sliced bacon and with a big knife just cut it into thirds or fourths right without even taking it out of the package. Then I put each 3rd or 4th into a small ziplock bag (don't bother separating the strips at all). Then I put the smaller bags into one larger ziplock bage and keep it in the freezer for when I need some bacon pieces in beans or something but don't need a whole package of bacon. It's very handy, you just put the frozen chunk in your skillet and it starts cooking and separating into little mini bacon strips.

I guess I'm really lucky in that my DH loves having soup or stew for dinner as often as possible! Salad gives me indigestion, so this is such a good way for me to get my vegetables.