Soup

Today is the first day in six months that I felt like it was cool enough to enjoy some soup, so I made some. Nothing better than home-made chicken noodle soup. I make it the way my mother made it. I had cooked some chicken breasts several weeks ago (in water) for chicken salad (a summer staple in fresh tomato) and froze the broth. I made lemon chicken the other night, and had some left over pieces -- neither Alan nor I were hungry -- and so I put the left-over chicken in the broth, added some celery, fresh parsley, and some carrots, and there you have basic chicken soup. I put the noodles in about 15 minutes before we eat, that way the noodles don't get mushy. That's also how my mom made it. Well, almost. She would just throw a chicken in a pot, cover it with water, add three or four stalks (uncut) of celery, and a couple of carrots (uncut, unpeeled) and some salt and then simmer than for about three hours or so, until the chicken fell off the bones. Then at the end she'd add either pastina or rice or noodles.

We had soup often, I think. Although, mom's soups were more like stew, or were her stews more like soup? Anyway, I always loved my mom's soups (except for lentil) and she taught me how to make them. Since my husband isn't really a soup eater, I enjoy the feast myself for several days after I make a pot. I've learned to tone it down -- use a smaller pot -- so I only have to eat the soup for three days, instead of weeks (freezing one-serving containers). Since I now have a rather small freezer, I have to limit how much I freeze, so I stick to freezing stock (broth) and not soup. The soup I just put the pot in the fridge and when I want some, I just reheat it.

So, today is like a beautiful fall day. Tomorrow -- they tell me, it's going to be hot again, but then... they PROMISE it will cool off. I'm not holding my breath. I know I've complained about the warm weather we've had this year. I'm really tired of it. Those hot flashes I endure at this time of my life are more severe in warm weather, and I look forward to the cooling effect, both on the outdoors, and on my metabolism, that lower temperatures will bring.

This really has nothing to do with Runnemede except that I learned to cook in Runnemede. When I was nine years old, my mom bought me a children's cookbook. The first thing (besides toast, which isn't really cooking) she taught me to make from that book was scrambled eggs. I still love scrambled eggs -- well, souped-up scrambled eggs, or are they called "loaded" scrambled eggs -- must have some ham, cheese, fresh red pepper, onion (just a smidgen), if no ham, then bacon. Sounds like an omelet, but with scrambled eggs (loaded) you don't have to have a perfect round egg dish slide from the pan, you can just scoop it out -- much easier.

I never caught on to why people want omelette's -- scrambled eggs is the same thing, just not as fancy.

Back to learning to cook in Runnemede...well, then she taught me how to measure, or read a measuring cup, and that's the best use of fractions I can think of. How many tablespoons make 1/4 cup? Who cares? How many teaspoons make a tablespoon -- 3 teaspoons make one tablespoon, but I have at least six sets of measuring spoons and measuring cups, so I don't have to make that conversion. Mom never had measuring spoons, that I can recall. She had her "cooking" teaspoon and that covered everything that required "spoon" measurements. She had a pyrex two-cup measure, and that covered the cup-ish measurements.

I seem to have to have every new set that I see on the Cooking channel. I found the neatest set of measuring spoons in Wyoming this summer -- they measure "a smidgen", "a pinch", "a taste", and "a soup-son" -- that last one's not spelled correctly, but I don't feel like getting up and going to the kitchen to find out how to spell it correctly. Needless to say, the scoop part of the spoons are very, very small. But I thought it was a cute gadget, so I bought it.

Enough rambling about cooking, and soup, etc. I hope you all enjoy soup on a cool autumn day and that your mom taught you how to make a great soup like my mom did.