Soup
December 07, 2008
Through the years, the one thing that I've learned to cook well is soup. I started about 15 years ago, when I had a taste of home-made squash soup (albeit made in the home of a chef). It was a revelation.
A year later, a woman named Brenda invited me over to her house for Borscht. I hated beets. Or so I thought.
By now, I can make about a dozen different soups well. My tomato-basil was my favorite last summer. I made ham-baked potato for CD earlier this week. And last night, feeling kinda blue, I simmered up some french onion with the last of that nice tawny port I had.
If pressed, I can served it with the bread and broiled cheese on top but I tend to eat it naked in a mug, steaming, with a roll for dipping and some cheese and apple wedges on the side.
I'm just my family's cook and too often I get dinner wrong. Clearly? I'm not a chef. I've never trained. Not even in my own childhood. No one made soup a part of their repertoire. My dad worked at Campbells for some years, so our soups came from a can with a red and white label.
But making soup is more than a sort of hidden, and probably somewhat useless, talent. It never fails to lift me from ennui, or sadness. And it makes me feel connected to the millions of pots of soups that have nourished and do sustain so many homes, hearths, and bellies for millenni. The different flavors, the different cultures, the different recipes handed down on index cards that grow grubby from use.
I guess there's something about making soup - the chopping, and stirring, the steam and scents - that heals my soul.
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Posted on December 07, 2008 at 10:30 AM and filed under: Recipes
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Posted on December 07, 2008 at 10:30 AM and filed under: Recipes
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And on tonight's menu
June 07, 2005
Well, that was a little political, even for me.
*exhale*
Can you tell? It's been a bad week. I've worked past 2AM 3 times in the last 6 days in order to pull together the detailed plan (MPP for you technogeeks) of my latest project. In case you're wondering, that is 1000 lines of plan including: predecessors, resources, task descriptions, costs, rates, assumptions, durations, hours, milestones and deliverables to roll up to a previous time & materials estimate within 10%.
Formatted to an ever-changing list of specifications. For example, "Please now use group names as attached"; "Rates for architects have been changed"; "An organizational edit is immediately requested that all milestones be 0 hour 0 duration and in red, italic, arial 9 pt."
In triplicate.
And then the hard drives, in a suicide pact that we've feared for months (despite copious counseling and pleas), all died.
And then? Working in my bedroom as my office rebuild goes on and on and on? Got just a wee bit confining. (Oh! Wait! *looks around* I'm still IN the bedroom!)
And we still haven;t decided whether to move or to stay or what.
And did I mention that it got really, really hot outside?
So, you know. All things in perspective - healthy, solvent family yada yada yada. But I'm a little zonked.
As of now, we're turning this emotional cruise ship around.
First, dinner: Omaha steak tips, marinated overnight in teryaki and then broiled. Light homemade potato salad (yes, my famous receipe). And a big glass of limeade.
Then: FoodTV in front of the air conditioner.
Finally: 8 hours of sleep.
Tomorrow is another day.
*pondering the fact that no one seems to be out there. are you ok out there? is your world zonked, too? I've got extra steak tips...*
