Domestic Arts

Sunday afternoon, on the way to the airport, my mom and I stopped by my grandmother's house for a lunch of soup and cornbread. For a long time now, I've been wanting to do that once-a-month cooking thing; I hear those who do it save a lot of money. Certainly my grandmother has done it as long as I can remember; in fact, in that picture I linked, she and I are standing in front of the deep freeze, which is packed with soups, vegetables grown by members of my family, pies, and other goodies.

So I was at the grocery store this evening, and, inspired by both my grandmother and Lauren, I was seized by the urge to make a big pot of soup. I reviewed what I already had at home that would be good in soup -- brown rice, beans, chicken broth, and just-thawed chicken -- and I bought two cans of roasted garlic diced tomatoes. I baked the chicken (three breasts) in olive oil and a BIG pinch of Herbes de Provence, threw the rice, beans, chicken broth, and tomatoes in a pot, diced the chicken in the CorningWare dish so that it would sop up the remaining olive oil and Herbes de Provence, then put it in the soup. I added some red pepper flakes, but no other herbs or spices. It's fantastic, and there are now four jars of it in my freezer.

I did a lot more knitting than I did cooking during the holidays. A couple of projects include this k2p2 ribbed scarf made from Ecological Wool yarn:

Then I started this one from cotton yarn and squiggle yarn, also k2p2 rib:

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Soup!

Good deal on the soup. I'm about to experiment with a leek and potato soup. I saw a leek in the grocery store and it looked so big and happy and fresh I had to buy it, then realized I had no idea what to do with the damn thing.

The soup sounds wonderful. I

The soup sounds wonderful. I have been making lots of soup since winter hit. The last batch was a chicken florentine, but now it seems to be time for a nice chowder. Hmmmm...that means good bread!

lots and lots of soup

This is soooooo soup weather. I've been making a pot every week or so; right now we're working on leek, potato and chicken.

Soup Anxiety

As I said in the post, this was the first time I'd ever made soup. I always had anxiety about it before, mainly that I'd use a lot of food to make this large quantity of soup, it would taste terrible, and I'd have to throw it all away.

Yeah, I know I could have just used a recipe, but that's not my way. :-) Luckily, it was good. I wanted to play it safe and use herbs that were in the same school. The canned tomatoes contained dehydrated onion and garlic and had an Italian flavor, so I didn't want to get too risky with the seasoning for the chicken (no curry, Cajun, or Creole seasoning, all of which I use often). Just the Herbes de Provence, for which thyme is an ingredient, and I know my mom uses thyme in almost every soup she makes.

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