Easy sweet potato and apple soup (with or without meat)

Usually once a week I like to make a big pot of something to last a few meals, since generally I only have a small window between classes and work to eat anything. Spurred by fits of various types of boredom, I like spontaneously dragging whatever I think of out of the fridge and cupboard to make a salad/pasta topper or soup.

So today I armed myself with two week old sweet potatoes and determined to make something with it that would vanish the dieting food 'blahs.'

Recipe isn't exactly what I did, since I didn't have any apple cider, but while eating I was thinking cider would give it more of a flavor boost. Alright then.

Ingredients-

4 cups of sweet potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
Onions of your choice and amount (I used a cup of chopped yellow onions, onion haters use cabbage instead, perhaps, and scallions if you can stand them)
- 1/2 cup sliced mushrooms (omit if not a mushroom fan, perhaps replace with some squash like zuchinni or butternut)
- 2 medium apples, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes (I used johnathan apples, they're sweet/sour and similar to mcintosh/cortlands)
- 2 cups of water
- 1 cup of apple cider (hard, sparkling, or normal, could also use apple juice)
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp salt
- pepper to taste

OPTIONAL- In this recipe I used roughly 6 oz of boneless skinless chicken breast

Steps-
- add water, cider, and 1tsp cinnamon to a pot or pan
- set heat to medium while chopping ingredients
- chop ingredients
- add sweet potatoes and optional meat to liquid, let cook for 10-15 minutes, covered, until sweet potatoes are slightly tender
- remove lid and add the rest of the food ingredients
- sprinkle the nutmeg, cloves, salt, pepper, and remaining cinnamon over top, do not stir
- cover and cook 10 mins or so until sweet potatoes are soft, onions are cooked, and apples are tender (but not mush)
- at this point I removed my cooked chicken, cut it into small pieces, and added it back in

- Makes 4 servings
- I also added 2 tbsp of a Sweet Potato and cranberry salsa on top that I bought from Aldi's yesterday.

Recipe is not very fussy, and even without cider I thought it tasted similar to the pumpkin cider I had yesterday. I would recommend maybe adding spinach to the recipe, or accompanying a meatless version with pork that had been cooked in a crock pot with sparkling apple cider, ginger, basil, cloves/nutmeg/cinnamon, carrots, onions, and served over lettuce or with an herbed rice.

The soup itself could have benefitted from ginger, I think. And it's about 300 cals per serving, 13g of protein, 60carbs and 300mg sodium, most of which comes from the addition of the 1/4 tsp of salt, which can be omitted.) I think this soup would also be really good with shrimp....

Hope this isn't too long/confusing. Enjoy!