soup v and vi: tomato, lentil

Well aren't yall in for a treat ... a two-fer. Yup having to resort to this because I have been lazy. Thus I may not remember these as well as a should (as an aside remember is one of my favorite words. It implies the action of re-membering, like putting back together the traitor that has been drawn and quartered. They do not quite turn out the same as the original. Neither do memories when retold.) Now with that thought in mind lets turn to the Tuscan Tomato soup.

To make this you need a bunch of tomatoes. The the fun part is seeding them.

The book recommended after skinning them to quarter them and dig the seeds out. I found it a lot easier, and messier, just to squeeze those puppies. In the end I had a pile of tomatoes to mix with some chicken broth and herbs. We were in business. We added a little corn starch to thicken it up, toasted bread and cheese. The soup was excellent. As a bonus it was nice and cold out, perfect tomato soup weather.

The next soup we made was lentil. But this wasn't just some run-of-the-mill lentil soup, because I can make good lentil soup.

Nope this was lentils and curry and lemon. Sacrebleu! What in the world are all these extra ingredients meant for? They are there to make some nasty, bitter, rancid mess. I ate about three spoonfuls, and it was a fight to get those last two into my mouth. I don't think Michelle survived that long. I blame it on a bad lemon, but after reading up online I may of overcooked the curry. But I really don't see how, as I followed all the directions. Needless to say, don't put lemon and curry in your lentils unless you know what you are doing.

soup iii: split pea and bacon

This soup is going to make me rich! I now realize that I will not have to pay for overpriced baby food when Michelle and I have a kid.

Split pea soup ... pretty easy. Cook peas in chicken stock until mush. The soup came out a nice yellowish-green color. I suppose I could have located peas that were greener in color and made it look more akin to the vomit-color that this soup is known for, but really it is just an aesthetic decision. Taste-wise the soup was sweet. I am thinking that the sweetness

of these soups may have more to do with using homemade stock, perhaps the sodium in the store bought stuff just overpowers the sweetness. The peas had a nice velvety mush consistency that contrasted well with the crisp salty bacon. In fact I think that was the highlight of the soup. The soup portion was more of a backdrop, or canvas if you will, for the delightful bits of bacon. Come to think of it life is the canvas that contains, magnifies and provides occasion for the moments when I get to eat bacon.

soup i: chicken noodle soup

prepared: 1.7.11

The first soup we prepared was chicken noodle. Completion of this soup was easy enough as we have cooked the soup many times before. A little broth, some chicken, carrots and onions and we were good to go. We left the celery out because Michelle is not too fond of it. The soup probably, no definitely, would have been better had we prepared our own stock. Given the time constraints on our hunger, we decided to go with store broth.

We then debated whether or not we had enough broth. Boiling the egg noodles in the soup allowed them to soak up a lot of the broth. It turned out very noodlely (I love making up new words. Perhaps we should describe it as noodley, but I like 3 syllables better). The highlight of the soup was using the dark meat off the chicken that I had beer-canned the previous evening. The recipe called for white meat, but that is bland. As I get older I am finding the dark meat and its fattiness much more satisfying.