Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Gee, Your Soup Tastes Terrific

If I was a working woman (which I'm not), wearing away my nose on the grindstone of public education...I'd be checking the forecast for snow about five times a day. I only looked once. That's because last night, the temperature dipped to 49 degrees here at the homestead. I knew cooler days were on the way, because every few days I sneak a peek at the long-range forecast. Long for me. Ten days ahead.

Because of the impending cool snap, I bought some vegetable beef soup mix last week. You don't think Val would make soup totally from scratch, do you? Hick is lucky he doesn't have me cutting open a can of Campbell's Chunky. At least I wouldn't have to use a pocket knife like a hobo. While it's true that I don't have an electric can opener, I DO have one of those lever/wedge/wheel-and-axle manual kinds (always the ex-science teacher, promoting the simple machines--sorry about that, screw/pulley/inclined plane, your time will come) that works just as well, providing you don't have an undiagnosed case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

I browned some Save A Lot hamburger while waiting for the eight cups of water to come to a rolling boil, more for the flavor than to avoid watching the pot. I opened up some cans of small whole potatoes for dicing (since we don't have real ones because without The Pony desiring them baked, they go rotten too fast), sliced carrots, green beans, diced tomatoes (the last real ones I had, on the stem, kept really well, but when sliced open the seeds were about an inch long and creepy so I threw them out). I drained the fluid from all but the diced tomatoes. By that time, the water roiled, and I whisked in my soup mix. Then I added the hamburger (after sopping up the grease with 3 slices of stale Nutty Oat bread as it cooked, for the dogs' nightly treat), and chopped a white onion (without losing any partial-thumbs) and sweated it to add later. In went the canned veggies, along with three packets of Splenda, and varying sized dashes of Heinz 57 Sauce, BBQ sauce, Worcestershire sauce, steak sauce, ketchup, and minced garlic. A few grinds of black pepper from the grinder that my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel gave me a while back (not the original pepper), and my sweaty onions were ready to join the pot.

Whoopsie! I just remembered! I forgot the yellow mustard dash this time. But that's okay! Because this soup was perfect the first time I tasted it! That doesn't always happen. The soup was done by noon, but I resisted except for tasting the juice. At 4:15 I put it on the stove to warm up, and went out to take a short walk while the dogs fought for my attention. I love this time of year! Even though the wish for snow seems pointless now, I can wish it for my cronies who still toil in the trenches of academia.

I was planning to make Hick some garlic cheese bread to go with the soup, even though he had some the past two nights with his spaghetti and the leftovers. Hick said he was fine without it, but he would take some canned biscuits that were only two weeks past the expiration date, having languished in Frig II since The Pony left before we had time to cook them. Gotta watch out for those canned biscuits. They were instrumental in the downfall of the original Frig.

I called Hick to the kitchen so he could heap his pile of soup himself. He doesn't cotton to the juice, you know. Which I found out when he put a whole beef roast in his bowl, piled twice as high as the rim. He only gets hamburger in it now, which is harder to build with because of its rounded edges. Can you believe that Hick didn't believe me about the biscuits having the butter already baked in? I suppose I should have left out the label. Or showed him the dough before I slid the pan in the oven. He actually tore one apart and said, "So you say there's butter in here?"

That soup was great, if I do say so myself. I guess it's kind of like patting myself on the back for a boxed-mix cake, but it DID take me an hour to assemble.

Sure wish I could have had one of those biscuits.

16 comments:

  1. Sounds good, but I think it needs a little salt.

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    1. Salt? That's PREPOSTEROUS! That soup mix and canned vegetables and assorted sauces already contained enough salt to kill a whole busload of casino-bound hypertensives!

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  2. Maybe if I resist temptation like you do, I won't look so much like a biscuit.

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    1. Well, don't claim that you're full of butter, or Hick will rip you in half to see for himself!

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  3. Maybe a dash of sherry just to keep everyone honest?

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    1. I find that honesty is highly overrated.

      You must think the homestead contains a fully-stocked pantry AND a fully-stocked bar. Old Mother Hubbard's dog and Dean Martin would be equally disappointed.

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  4. I have one of those tin openers too (not for actual use though). I love that you threw the tomatoes out for having creepy seeds - It's just the kind of thing I would have done!

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    1. I had never seen such a thing in my considerably long life. Those tomatoes looked like they were sprouting on the inside! Probably some kind of GMO frankentomato. They lasted about 10 days, still no sign of a mushy spot, and I sawed one open with a serrated knife and beheld those creeping seeds. Off the back porch they went.

      Don't know how they'll affect the chickens.

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  5. I do the same kind of from scratch cooking as you do--when I cook at all. For instance, the gravy for my pot roast is cream of mushroom soup, Kitchen Bouquet, Worcestershire sauce & some spices & it's delicious!!

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    1. Now that I know gravy is so easy to make, Hick is in for a treat. I'll have to find out what Kitchen Bouquet is, though, and go buy some...

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  6. Well a dash of this and a pinch of that always works for me, too. I was all ready to make homemade soup when honey decided he wanted a large salad with chicken, which meant I do no have to cook.

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    1. I hope you at least took credit for the big salad!

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  7. After forty-two years of marriage my wife can finally make gravy that doesn't stick to a spoon like cement.

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    1. Practice makes perfect! If she'd take up the piano, she might be at Carnegie Hall in the near future.

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  8. This makes me hungry! I had a can of biscuits explode in my hand when I picked them up. It was like a doughy bomb. Chunks of the dough went everywhere and the dogs were in doughy heaven.

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    1. I had one break out the plastic on the inside of the original FRIG. No wonder I'm so scared to pop them open in my hand. But now I know to let the dogs in if one explodes in the kitchen.

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