Misadventures in soup

Soup. What could be simpler to make? Easier to enjoy?

Do not be fooled. Soup is nefarious and will catch you unawares.

Misadventures with soup Take I: Siamese cat hair soup*

It was late. I'd had a terrible headache all day, the kind of headache that sends you to bed and banishes cats that invariably want to sit on you to increase, err, ease your pain. But gnawings from within rousted me. "Soup!" demanded the inner powers that be.

I shuffled to the kitchen and pondered the contents of the refrigerator. There was precious little to be of use. Finally I grabbed some hoary carrots and a shriveled plug of ginger. While the coarsely chopped roots bobbed in a cup of broth on the slow carousel-ride-to-nowhere inside the microwave, I peeled the ginger, removed the fuzzy bits, cut it into large pieces and chucked them in with the carrots. While the soup cooked a few minutes more I thinly sliced some green onions.

Finally something smelled yummy. I paused the microwave and checked the bowl. The carrots were tender, the broth smelled sweet and spicy. However the carrot chunks were really big, and I wasn't in much mood to chew.

Into the blender! I scooped all the veggie bits into the blender and added just a small amount of broth to avoid boiling splatter. Slowly I added in the rest of the broth and at the last, the diced green onion. After a brief whirling, a gorgeously orange carrot ginger soup was all ready. A 10 minute dinner! I poured the soup into a big mug and settled into the couch.

The first sip was delicious. And furry. I wasn't really sure how I got cat hair all over my mouth, but I wiped my face and had another drink. Another furry drink. And then I realized I'd done something horribly wrong.

Ginger is delightful when you slice it across the grain. However, cutting an inch and half long chunk into quarters along the center axis is not so bright. Putting those chunks into the blender is even less so. Cutting ginger longitudinally and then blending it ensures that you get an even dispersion of long fibers in whatever you have made. Your soup may be tasty, but you'll get a mouth full of cat hair in every bite.

*(no cats were involved in the making of this soup, the Siamese refers to Thailand, home of gingery soups)

Misadventures with soup Take II: Flor soup

As if the cat hair soup weren't bad enough! Tonights special is Flor soup.

Today was a long, demeaning day at work, followed by a depressing chat with my sister, followed by contemplation of an increasingly hopeless looking future. If this isn't a situation calling for homemade, comforting soup, I don't know what is. The refrigerator has a nice variety of vegetables on their last legs: a handful of withered, pencil-thin asparagus, half a wilting head of lettuce, soft potatoes, a squash that is about to live up to its name. Surely these things would all meld happily to create a beautiful, nutrient-rich, comforting bowl of soup.

And so it was, until I decided that the veggies needed to be pureed so that I'd have soup plus leftover thick stock for other projects.

Blender to the rescue! I scooped in all the veggie bits and added just a small amount of broth to avoid boiling splatter. Slowly I added in the rest of the broth. Then I decided there was too much hot liquid in the blender and I'd better decant some, lest I burn myself and make a mess when I pushed the liquify button. I lifted the glass pitcher to pour off the top and watched the entire contents splatter all over the counter, all over my feet, all over the floor.

If kitchen appliances could vomit, this is what it would look like. The cupboard doors are covered in chunky slime, there are pools of green flecked ooze in my dress shoes. The bottom of the canister is still attached to the blender. There is a pool of soup sitting there in a post-modern tureen.

My socks are sodden and my pant legs are caked in damp vegetable cement. I don't know whether to mop or sweep to the sludge off the floor.

Meanwhile, the pizza kitchen at costco closed an hour ago.