Scenes From the Sucking Vortex Also Known as TheVictorian Homestead

Hey! Have you heard? I have some spare potatoes laying around. Genius asked me to make some potato soup. I'm sure he did that because he had no idea I had 20 pounds of Huge 'Uns in the pantry. I showed him! I really made some potato soup.

Okay, so it wasn't as easy as Genius led me to believe. I had to look up a recipe on the internet. I found two. Yes. I admit that they were the first two I looked at. Complicating matters is the fact that Shiba, my laptop set up in the living room in order to run internet via a Sprint connect thingy to my New Delly in my dark basement lair, no longer has printer capabilities. That happened when Genius upgraded the Sprint connect thingy, and put in a new router. It seemed too much trouble to email myself a recipe, then go downstairs and print it. Likewise, it seemed like too much trouble to keep hiking back and forth from the kitchen to the living room while making soup. Oh, and according to Genius, it was also too much trouble to install his downstairs printer to my Shiba, necessitating only a call to The Pony to grab the document and hoof it upstairs to us. As you can see, we are a lazy bunch of slackers who do not really deserve potato soup.

I read over those recipes a couple of times. I had most of the ingredients. Well. I had potatoes. I peeled six Huge 'Uns. But first I had to wash them. They smelled like dirt! And left a ring around my sink. Then I had to chop them to Genius's satisfaction, which meant they would disintegrate into pencil-eraser-sized nubs by the time the soup was done. I needed an onion. I asked Genius to hand me one from the bottom crisper of Frig while he was making a giant mess of crumbs around the toaster in a show of making his own lunch of a turkey and pepper jack sandwich. The sigh he emitted could have blown down the first two Little Pigs' houses. Oh, he gave me two onions. The smallest two in the crisper. One recipe called for boiling the diced onion with the potatoes. The other called for sweating the onion in bacon grease. I figured two onions are better than one.

There was no celery to be had, so that ingredient was struck from both recipes. One called for ham, the other for bacon. I had a little of each, four half-slices of ham left from Christmas, and a half pound of thick-sliced bacon left from Genius's noontime breakfast yesterday. I tossed in the ham after dicing, and got out the bacon. Wouldn't you know it, both boys wanted a slice. Which turned out to be three for Genius and two for The Pony. Which left me with five slices remaining for the potato soup. I fried up my second tiny onion. Then I added minced garlic, and some concoction of butter, flour, and milk. Some might call it a roux, I think. I followed those directions I had to go back to the living room to find, even though common sense told me to simply pour in some flour, a couple dollops of butter, and a hefty splash of milk.

Wouldn't you know it? One recipe required chicken stock. Seriously. My chicken stock has been sitting on the counter, opened, for a month or two. I don't think it goes bad. My work colleague had a fit when her daughter used some and put the waxy cardboard container in the refrigerator. It does not say to refrigerate after opening. I poured some out, and it looked fine. The Pony, in kitchen for his bacon, chanted "taste it, taste it" but I demurred. I ransacked the big pantry for any cream-of soup, but alas, I was fresh out. I did, however, find a can of chicken noodle soup that doesn't expire until July 2015, so I used that, meaning to strain out the juice and leave the noodles in the can. Yeah. Guess who made potato soup with noodles? VAL.

I'd been grinding in fresh black pepper all along. But for all the garlic and onion and bacon and ham...my potato soup still tasted bland. I shook in some garlic salt, then turned to my old standbys, Worcestershire Sauce, Heinz 57, and, for good measure, some Save A Lot steak sauce. It still tasted a little bland to me, but Hick and Genius scarfed it up like Huge 'Uns were going out of style. They did add a bit of shredded sharp cheddar which I provided without even including any finger skin. On the side, they were all a-twitter about the magnificent biscuits, which came from a box, Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit mix, which is just Bisquick and some garlic powder to mix with butter. I've actually made those biscuits from an internet recipe, and they came out about the same, with the exception of the garlic powder stuff packing more of a punch and having more green-specked color than my melted butter and minced garlic brush-on coating.

Yes, I'd call that potato soup a success. Genius even stated later, without prompting, "That soup was really good." Hick hoisted himself up for a second bowl. OF SOUP! And you know how Hick usually likes his soup, TOWERING. But this he ate with a spoon and liked it! It can't be that he was simply starving, since I also gave him sliced Oberle sausage on the side in the guise of protein.

Poor, simple Genius. As he was toasting that bread for a sandwich at 11:45, he asked, "So, I'm not clear. Am I having this potato soup for lunch? Because it says it only takes 15 minutes." I explained that his soup would not be ready for lunch. It was supper. He was not accounting for prep time.

At 2:00, that potato soup was ready for a slow simmer. Fifteen minutes my--

At least there's enough left for tomorrow. And some to give my mom!