Saturday, February 27, 2010

Savoring the Soup

How awful it was to have to make soup without Richard! Chuck and Gayle wanted to spend a quiet week-end together, and we know nothing stays quiet long when I'm around. Obviously, Chuck wasn't going to be chopping my veggies for me. Time for a fall-back position.

At first, I called my nephew-in-law James, who cooks for a living, and told him I was bringing the ingredients for him to help me cut. But, since he's Mr. Mom to a two and an under-one-year old while my niece Melanie is in college, that didn't work out. The boys are just too adorable to ignore; besides, Melanie and James don't have a fifty-five gallon drum sized pot for the vat of soup I planned to make.

I began boiling the soup meat and soup bones when I got to Scott and Buffy's house. While they cooled enough to be refrigerated, we went to Miya's "little" birthday party. OMG! It looked like Sandra Lee had set the stage for "Semi Homemade" There was pink and chocolate everywhere. I was almost in a sugar shock coma by the time we left the housefull of squealing nine-year-old princesses. It was so nice to get back to the garlic and beef infused atmosphere I had created at Scott's.

By the time I got up in the morning, Buffy had returned the soup pot to the kitchen from where she refrigerated it overnight. Then the fun began. I defatted and deboned the meat while Buffy chopped carrots. Neither Buffy nor I fine cut anything; home cooking looks homemade when we cook. But I was a bit disappointed for Gayle's family that they wouldn't get a tiny morsel of each ingredient in each spoonful of soup. Oh, well, I guess they'll just have to use bigger spoons.