• Tag Archives soup

  • Food, Tea, More Food, Nap, Food

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                      Waning Moon of Long Nights

    Kate and I had our business meeting, checking this box and that, doing those things couples need to do to keep life solid and sane.

    Afterward, we saddled up the old Tundra and drove her over to the Maple Grove shopping area where we made investments in food:  12 qt. stock pot, melamine mixing bowls, a scraper or two, some coffee and dish towels.  I also purchased bulk tea at Tea Vana, but was disappointed to learn that they no longer carried my long time favorite:  lapsang souchong.  The kind guy behind the counter found a bit extra for me from his private stash.

    After lunch at Biaggia’s we drove home for our nap, from which I just got up.  Next on the day’s agenda, drive into the Red Stag and eat dinner.  Do you see a pattern here?


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking 📎and tagged

  • Soupy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                             Waxing Moon of Long Nights

    A soupy day with chicken noodle soup finished, a leek broth made and a leek and potato soup within 10 minutes of being done.  It requires some finish work, in this case using an immersion blender.  I used 5 pounds of leeks and 5 pounds of potatoes, so we’ll have this soup for some time.  It freezes well, or so the internet material suggests.

    Sad news about our potatoes and carrots.  We had our potatoes, a large crop, in the garage stairwell.  Since our garage has insulation, the stairwell usually stays above freezing in the winter, just right for potatoes.  When we had the cold snap though, the snowblower bay garage door stuck open unbeknown to either of us.  They froze.  After freezing, it turns out, potatoes just don’t seem all that edible.  So, no potatoes.  A lesson for next year.

    Lesson number 2.  You can leave carrots in the ground until it freezes.  After that you can’t get to them.  Seems obvious enough, but it slipped past my attention.  Carrot compost in the carrot bed now.

    Some learning curves are steeper than others.  I would sure hate to have learned these lessons on my homestead on the prairie.  Lessons like these could have been fatal.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking 📎and tagged

  • Aspects of Our Lives

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samhain                           New (Wolf) Moon

    Kate and I had our business meeting.  It involved the always fun annual chore of signing up for benefits with Allina.  This is probably the last time we’ll need to do it.  Even though it’s an overly complex task, it does have significant repercussions throughout the year, so it pays to do it thoughtfully.

    After the meeting we began our first (of what we intend to be continuing) weekly menu planning.  This week I chose a red beet soup and a white bean and winter squash soup.  Kate picked a vegetarian slow cooker recipe and the brisket.  Tomorrow we’ll make a grocery list and I’ll go buy the ingredients, then we’ll cook together for a day or half a day.  The grocery list will include fruits, one serving a meal, and ingredients for tabouli, which we both enjoy.  I’ll make the soups and Kate will cook the meat and slow cooker meals.  We’ll add in salad and fruit along the way.

    Kate’s recovery seems to have stalled and I don’t know what to make of it.  I’m glad we have an appointment with Dr. Schwender on Thursday morning.  I’m feeling a need–and so is she–for some reassurance about the healing process and the eventual outcome.

    Now, I have to make up for the lost hour of sleep last night while I completed my trip through hell.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Cooking Health 📎and tagged

  • Two One Hundred Yard Pots of Soup

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    15  bar steep rise 29.50  5mph  W  windchill 9   Samhain

    Full Moon of Long Nights     Day  8hr  45mn

    It’s 4:48 and the sun has been down for 20 minutes, twilight almost run its course.  We are a week away from the Winter Solstice, the high holiday in my personal calendar.

    There is a simple pleasure, at once profound and straightforward.  Grow a vegetable.  Save it in the fall.  Use it in soups in the winter.  Today I made bean based soups with white and black beans from our garden.  Onions and garlic went in each of them, too.  So did some Swiss Chard grown in our hydroponics.

    Clive Thompson, a writer for Wired Magazine, had a column this issue titled Urban Food.  He said to heck with the 100 mile meal, I’m talking about the 100 yard meal.  These two pots of soup are 100 yard pots of soup.

    Feels great.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged