I got a large bag of sweet potatoes from the CSA this week.

So I decided to make gypsy soup. You might remember this recipe from the original Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. If you happen to have a copy of the book lying around, you can use Mollie’s original recipe. Or you can do as I did and search online. You’ll find a lot of variations to choose from.

Gypsy soup features an orange vegetable (sweet potatoes, squash, or carrots) and chickpeas and is spiced with paprika. It’s both spicy and sweet and makes a warming meal on a cold winter day. I adapted the recipe I chose to exclude ingredients I didn’t have on hand (celery) and include more of what I had abundantly on hand (sweet potatoes and green peppers).

Here’s my local analysis of my soup ingredients:

Local:

sweet potatoes –from the CSA

onions–from the CSA

green peppers–from my freezer, originally from the CSA

garlic–from my garden

basil–from my garden

vegetable broth–homemade from vegetable scraps (vegetables originally from the CSA)

Nonlocal:

canned tomatoes–could have been local but, alas, I neglected to can tomatoes last summer

chickpeas

paprika

turmeric

cinnamon

Not bad, except for the tomatoes.