Morrocan Style Smoked Turkey and Sweet Potato Stew (Orange Soup)

So this is the recipe that started it all!

Cooked it last night and was so pleased with the result that I wrote up the recipe and sent it to the few people I know who might care (ie - sister, mother, grandmother). Then today couldn't resist telling friends about it. They suggest I start a "food blog" since I often talk about the thing I cooked the night before (if worth talking about -- making tuna noodle casserole again does not warrant a conversation). Clearly this is a ploy to divert me from boring them with my recipe stories. No matter, I was intrigued by the idea of a "food blog". Because maybe, just maybe, there is a person or two out there in internet land who might be interested. And it lets me try out this whole blog business that's all the rage.

Back story to the recipe: Came home last night. Hadn't been to the grocery store for a week. Needed dinner and looked to see what was around. Just had a great soup out a my mom's house, so decided to try for that. I noticed I had a lot of orange colored ingredients (sweet potatoes, orange bell pepper, carrots, orange lentils). "I'll make an orange soup!" I thought. That led to using morrocan style seasoning (actually Indian seasonings - and I mean Indian Indian, as in we got them when we were in india earlier this year). Below is the final concontion, and, I must say, "damn it was good."

Moroccan Style Smoked Turkey and Sweet Potato Stew

1/2 diced red onion
1/2 diced orange beel pepper
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 cup diced cubed sweet potato
1 large chopped carrot
1 squeeze of honey
2 dashes of garam masala (indian spice blend)
1 small stick cinnamon
a few cloves
few sprigs dried thyme
1 cup smoked turkey (cubed)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 can whole tomatoes (crush up when adding)
Water or chicken stock
olive oil

In a stew pot, heat up the olive oil. Add diced onion, pepper, and carrots and cook with pretty high heat. Add garlic and cook for a bit. Next add tomato paste, stirring to coat everything and let it cook for a few minutes. Next add canned tomatoes with juice and the water or stock, total should be maybe 4 cups of liquid. Also add the cinnamon, cloves, thyme and garam masala. Let boil away for a few minutes. Then add the diced sweet potatoes, reduce heat to simmer and cook until the sweet potatoes are done, maybe 20 minutes.

Yeah - I know I left out the orange lentils. I decided mid way through that they would be excessive considering that there was already sweet potatoes in there. Plus I'm still a little fuzzy on how long to cook them for. They will have to be saved for another recipe.