Soup.
I love soup. All kinds of soup. When made at home is it rarely the same twice. Soup seems to take flavor and depth from the weather and the mood of the cook like no other food can.
Monday, not wanting to venture to the grocery, Keifel and I made lentil soup with a few glaring omissions because of pantry deficits. It was okay. Those lovely little green and black discs of puy lentils in a celery, onion, garlic and thyme broth. Sadly there was no depth, no rich bottom note and no zippy high note, just flat muddy middle. There wasn’t a carrot or tomato or a sausage in the house and it was showing. Dejectedly, I ate a bowl of the stuff while plotting the supermarket raid to rescue it.
Last night, after lightening our wallet at Kroger, I toyed with the soup while Keifel seasoned the meat for meals later this week. I poured the sad, thin contents of the storage container back into the soup pot and cranked up the heat. A link of turkey keilbasa, a can of Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes, a can of garbanzo beans and a heavy dose of cracked black pepper later, the soup was transformed.
It was difficult to believe that the gruel I could have proudly served to Neil of The Young Ones was now a glorious, wondrous soup that I had to restrain myself from eating out of the pot. Keifel and I had planned on eating more of it for lunch, but our abode is too far away for Keifel to collect me for lunch and we didn’t really have any way to transport the soup here. I may have to have it for breakfast tomorrow as tonight, to honor the patron saint of Ireland, we are having shepherd’s pie.
