I Heart Soup

My goodness it's hard to write while having a conversation with the two-year-old in the next room about the diving fireman in the sink. You try it.

Last night we made a soup, which is one of my favorite things to eat. I like cream soups in the winter, and broth-based soups in the summer. I am a big fan of bullion as an quick flavor enhancer, but I don't think it's always necessary. My personal secret to soup is to add some olive oil, and then parmesan cheese once it's served. I see my mother-in-law do this, and everything she cooks is amazing, so why not copy her. If I know I'm making enough soup that some will get frozen, I keep the olive oil out of it until it's served. I actually don't know if this makes a difference, but I figure since I add it when it's reheated, I don't need extra.

To start nearly any soup, vegetable, chicken, beef, bean, I sautee some chopped onions and celery and carrotts in olive oil for about 5 minutes. Not very much, like half of each vegetable, finely diced. Last night we made a bean and vegetable soup. We soaked the beans all day, some red kidney beans and navy beans, and cut up the vegetables while the beans were cooking. I used chicken bullion for flavoring, and actually didn't do the onion sautee thing, as I felt like a bland soup last night.

J cut the zuchinni and some broccoli, and we added potatos and carrotts too. The whole thing cooked for about an hour, maybe a little more. We added the carrotts first, then the potatos, then broccoli, and zuchinni about three minutes before serving. Apprently, I made some kind of horrible timing mistake, where the beans were undercooked and the vegetables were overcooked. Luckily, J likes his food mushy, and he actually ate some broccoli. He spit out the one red bean he tasted, though, but I understood. It was a bit yucky.

I turned the burned back on to try and save it, so now the beans are cooked, and the veggies have completely disintigrated. I'm going to let J take the potato masher and mash it up, then I'm going to try to find a way to bread and fry the resulting sludge, but I'm not sure it will work. At least he'll have fun mashing. I tried to get him to use the masher on our homemade playdoh, but it's too stiff. The soup disaster will be just right. After all, it's halfway there.

That's about it for today. Here's the fish bouquet I promised, of smoked fish in the Maxima. Thanks for reading.
-Anne