Rutabeggy soup

My Grandma Prange is the inspiration for a lot of my cooking, and definitely the source of my obsession with cookbooks.  When my sister and I moved out of the house she brought over wash baskets FULL of beautiful, hard bound treasure troves of gastric heaven.  That cookbook collection is the pride of my kitchen, and I love paging through them and finding her hand written notes in the margins.  Grandma always uses simple ingredients, and she regularly cooks out of a box, but that doesn't stop her love of experimenting with food.  One time she dumped an entire can of cherry pie filling in a box of cake mix and called it "black forest."  Her "what's the worst that could happen?" attitude in the kitchen definitely wore off on me.  I think the most important thing Grandma taught me about food though is that it doesn't matter what you're making, if you make it with love it's worth sharing, and boy did Grandma love to share what she made.  So much so that she'd cook up a big pot of soup and drive it all the way over to our house for a big family meal.  Her chicken dumpling soup was amazing, but the favorite in our house was hands down her rutabeggy soup.  Yes, I know it's spelled rutabaga, but this soup is so good my sister and I would beg Grandma to make it.

Unfortunately Grandma is slowing down a bit, and not cooking as much, and even if she was I'm 2000 miles away and can't enjoy her cooking as much as I'd like to.  Still, I think about her a lot, and I try to cook and bake things that remind me of her.  When I saw the beautiful rutabagas at our local market I immediately thought of Grandma and just had to try my hand at beggy soup.  The leak and the bay seasoning are my own twist, but the heart of the recipe is my grandma's, and I think she'd be proud of the end result.  

1 3ish pound bone-in pork shoulder roast - try to get one with lots of fat and a big solid soup bone

2 leaks, cleaned and sliced

5 cloves of garlic, diced

2 ribs of celery, sliced

1 Tbsp bay seasoning

3 small peeled rutabagas (about 1 1/2 - 2 c) chopped

3 carrots, peeled and sliced

6 small peeled potatoes (about 1-1/12 c) chopped

Fresh cracked black pepper to taste

Put the whole roast in a large stock pot.  Cover with water and boil for about 90 minutes, covered, until you have a clear pork broth.  Add the leak, celery, garlic and bay seasoning.  Boil, covered, for another hour or so until the broth turns gold.  Because the veggies have different cook times, I like to chop and add the beggies first, then the carrots, and finally the potatoes.  Once all the veggies are in, pull out the pork roast and shred the meat off the bone, discarding any large pieces of fat that haven't boiled off.  Add the meat and the bone back into the pot.  Simmer, covered, until all of the veggies are tender.  Serve with fresh baked crescent rolls.