God, That's Good: Cooking through the sickness

What's a girl to do while she waits for her antibiotics? Cook, of course. I had these vegetables in my house (courtesy of my CSA):

These seemed like a natural soup choice to me. I got my mom a new cookbook this weekend (Deborah Madison's Local Flavors - a cookbook devoted to seasonal farmer's market cooking) and I flipped through it and found this recipe for a simple potage (which as far as I can tell means potato soup. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). It was so easy, I'm not even referring back to the book for what the directions were. I'm a maverick.

Leeks (I used two)
Potatoes (Yukon Gold preferred - I just grabbed a handful of small ones)
Baby Turnips (I just used a small bunch)
Chicken Stock (use water if you're a vegetarian. Or vegetable stock. But veggie stock is for losers)
salt and pepper
thyme
cream (optional)
1.5 Tbs butter

1. Wash and chop all your veggies. I chopped them, then washed them. I didn't peel the potatoes or the turnips. Potato skins are good for you and the turnips were really small. Wash the leeks really well, post chopping. Leeks are muddy little suckers.

2. Melt the butter in a large soup pot. Toss the vegetables in the butter and add 1/2 cup water or stock and some fresh thyme (or dried thyme if that's all you have). Simmer for five minutes.

Add 5 more cups of stock or water and some salt.

3. Bring to a boil, then bring down the heat to a simmer and let it simmer for 25-30 minutes. You can add some pepper here. And some more salt if you want. At this time, I decided I wanted to make my soup a little more pureed, but I didn't want to wash my food processor, so I just mashed it a bit with my potato masher.

4. There were still some larger bits, but I think that's okay. Varied textures! Then I added a little bit of cream (sinful, I know. But I added about 1/4 of a cup to a gigantic soup pot. You could even add less. Or no cream at all. Or some milk. Whatever floats your boat).