Soup's on

Chicken with wild rice soup: Done and cooling. Beef (actually turkey) Barley Vegetable: All ingredients prepped to be put in the slow cooker in the morning. Dishes: Some hand washed and drying, some run through the dishwasher and air drying. The rest of the kitchen: Could use a vacuum, wipe down and floor washing, but not until after both pots of soup are made, cooled and put into freezer containers.

The cook? Tired, and about to pour a big glass of chardonnay.

And craving...steak. Copeland's Rodeo has been playing in the background. The National Beef Council has trained me well. Now, when hearing a signature piece by one of the premiere American composers, rather than remembering how challenging the piece was to play when our high school orchestra conductor went crazy and made us sight read it, I think of...cooked cow.

Dinner will actually be a grilled cheese sandwich. On the way out of the market after the America's Test Kitchen demo, I picked up some sliced smoked gouda and a loaf of brioche sandwich bread. Bread in my house lives in the freezer, not because it takes me so long to go through it, but rather because if I don't freeze it, I'll eat all of it in a heartbeat. Love bread. So I'll settle in with a glass of wine while the bread thaws a bit.

I'd still like to make a third soup tomorrow. It's pretty easy - Pumpkin Basil. There is a wrinkle, though. I have a couple of cans of pumpkin puree, but a pie pumpkin is currently sitting on the dining room table. The soup is so much better made with fresh pumpkin puree. But after chopping all afternoon like Sweeney Todd getting ready for the dinner rush, I'm not sure I'm up to hacking a pumpkin into pieces to cook it. Come to think of it, I'm out of onions anyway.

Not my actual mug, though about the same size and
shape as the latte cup  I use.

The point of all this culinary chaos is to fill the freezer with individual servings of soup. Now that the weather cooled down, it's nice to have a hot lunch. The over sized latte mug I use as a soup bowl stays at work; all I have to do is grab a container of soup on the way out the door. No need to thaw.

Once the basement is cleared of cardboard and cleaned up a bit (and I'm making some progress there in spite of myself) the plan is to look for a small freezer. I like to have at least one big hunk o'meat on hand in case of an entertaining urge, plus the soup. Since the english muffins, sandwich thins, bagels and other assorted yeasty goodies also reside in the freezer, things can get a bit tight.

The iPod has moved on to something that doesn't make me want to eat rare fillet, so I think it's safe to go make the grilled cheese...and just maybe sample the soup.