This is when the post a day promise gets dicey: what to say when there’s nothing really to say, or so you think. Here’s what I do:
I noodle. Noodling is when you doodle with words. Start with a word, a thought, a fact, a feeling and just run with it. Want to see how it works for me?
What am I doing right now? Just finished making soup. Soup. Hmmmm. That’s good enough. My noodle word is soup.
Now what do I have to say today about soup? Cooking is a seasonal thing with me. Salads in summer; soup in winter. The weather in Sacramento just turned–on a dime, really. One day the air conditioning was on and the next, we needed heat. Last night I was actually cold in bed, so much so that I made myself get out in the middle of the night to put the afghan my mother crocheted for me decades ago on top of the covers.
So today heralds the beginning of my soup season. I hauled out the crock-pot and dug in the back of my larder for one of the packages of Market Classics Soup Mix that I’ve been collecting every time World Market puts them on sale. They’re not cheap–almost $4 for a packet–but they save me from creating anemic soup, which I have a tendency to do. Not out of frugality, but because I’m never sure when just enough isn’t really half enough. Consequently, my soup from scratch is full of good things–legumes and fresh veggies–but it’s somewhat light on the flavor. Market Classics is never light on the flavor, and it requires enough chopping and mixing and sauteing to make me feel as if, yes I have made this soup!
Today, I made their Bistro Style Lentil. Of course, being me, I couldn’t just leave well enough alone. The onion I chopped was probably larger than was called for, and my 4 cloves of garlic were less minced and more rough-cut. Then there was the can of diced tomatoes the recipe asked for. Call me a purist, but putting canned anything into homemade soup seems just wrong (and yes, I’m aware of the irony). Besides, I had no canned tomatoes in my larder. I had tomato sauce, but that had its own burden of spices and flavorings. What I did have was two perfectly nice, fresh zucchini, which seemed to me a suitable, if not unusual substitution for tomatoes.
Whether I’m right about that, only time and tasting will tell.
Now go visit taradharma.blogspot.com who has taken up the MLBNaBloPoMo challenge with me. It’s not too late for you to join in. Just shoot me an email–jane(at)midlifebloggers(dot)com–giving me your url so I can post it for all of us to visit.
