When Soup Goes Not-So-Pretty

Oh, it was pretty enough, I suppose.
And this cropped close-up gives you just a hint of its overall complexion.
When I say complexion, I mean gobs of chopped dino kale floating like kelp in the Sargasso Sea, if the Sargasso sea were made of pureed roasted sweet potatoes, vegetable broth, tofu and a squirt of lemon. Salt, too. Sort of like looking at a pumpkin with a bad skin condition.
But wow, such superfood. Your deep orange component, your deep green component, and your pale soy mush component.
It was tasty, but we probably won't make it again.
I prefer eating roasted sweet potatoes straight from the oven smeared with butter, and I like my dino kale like I like my seaweed salad: once in a while.
Damn, seaweed again.

Soopsoopsoopsoop

We are still having glorious weather in Northern California, but it can't stop me from a seasonal craving for soup.
I love soup.
I love eating soup, and I love making soup.
To my horrified chagrin, Cranky now loves making soup, and he does a good job of it. He didn't even like eating soup when we first met; he thought it wasn't sufficiently food-like.
And to top off the horrified chagrin, Cranky made this cream of broccoli soup with tofu! A New England born-and-raised, Red Sox lovin' man, cooking with tofu.
The soup was rich with several forms of allium, cooked with the broccoli in mere salted water. So simple. Blended with the tofu, drizzled with beautiful olive oil, and topped with some set-aside steamed florets (this was HIS idea).
Eating this soup was biological bliss; my body loved it as much as my mouth did.
And I want soup again today.
We have an almost petrifyingly petrifying idea to try out: Cream of porcini soup. Is this possible? Is it allowed? Shiver.

Best Food Picture

Best food picture I ever took, in a long time.
Cranky made the food, a modern Huevos Rancheros. There's the yellow egg blood in the upper right.
Lots of the food was homegrown, but we don't brag. Ain't growing black beans yet. Red onions and tomatoes, we're proud of.

Snoopy Soupy

Circumstances have intervened. We are not much of a gardening family at the moment.
We are a dog poop family.
But certain robust departments of the garden don't know that, and continue to pour out comestibles.
We have a huge bowl of green tomatoes in the kitchen, ready for roasting and freezing. (The plants themselves came out of the ground today.)
Oddly enough, there is a new eggplant developing on the vine outside. A few jalapeños lurch into adulthood. And we even have three or four pattypan squashes doing their best to mature; if they make it past adolescence I'll be amazed, but I'll still eat 'em.
The most reliable harvest has been a couple of plots we've been saving. Leeks and potatoes. The leeks never reached any kind of admirable girth, but... there they are. The potatoes — well, they've been underground so we had no idea if the crop would come a cropper. (It didn't!)
Anyway, you can guess what kind of soup we had for lunch.
I will brag (yet again) that blended vegetable soups are wonderful with some silken tofu in there. Didn't need any dairy fixin's.
Chopped chives on top, though. Oh, yeah.
Puppy didn't get any.

Fair Weather Friend

We've spent a lot, a LOT, of time on the patio with the new puppy. It seems the safest way to house train her: you pee outdoors, dammit, only! (And the behaviorist at the humane society agreed: prevention is the best policy.)
Luckily, the weather has been fabulous. Fabulous. So we sit out there with our newspapers and books and meals, and the puppy figures out life. Today she figured out we have a huge, loud hound living next door. She hasn't been the same ever since (and I think it's wonderful that she's attracted to dogs, instead of shy).
We've learned to tire her out with chasing and fetching. She's absolutely smitten by her personal, solo explorations of the yard. She loves to come running when we call, because there's usually a half of a dog cookie as a reward. It's working out well.
Oh. And she doesn't beg for human food. I don't know why. She's interested in meat if we're eating it, but that's seldom.
Today she completely ignored the artichokes with a dip of hummus liberally dribbled with good olive oil.
Fine! More for us.

Dog in Focus

I have several shots of Bartlett devouring her rawhide stick (and for you purists, it's a digestible, PC stick). But most of them are out of focus.
This dog is Da Wiggle!
I'm unexpectedly happy about what a chore this pup is. She's a project. And, yet, not. She's what a dog is. A puppy. So normal, so troublesome. So pleasurable.
Today we had some sassy bark time. Wow, what a bitch. Then it devolved into cuddle and romp time. Wow, what a girl!
I'm liking the development.

It's Maddening... and I Eat

Cranky has taken over the kitchen.
He's always been very useful, resourceful, creative in there. Now he's God. (Don't tell Eric Clapton.)
I've been "off" food, and if it weren't for Cranky, I'd be living on gummy bears.
So what if the last three meals were eggy? Eggs are good, and take it from me, not always easy to cook well.
Somebody in the house cooks eggs well, and I think it isn't yours truly, madly. I do OK, but have you ever heard of the Two-Sentence Poached Egg?
First of all, the photo is today's lunch of a frittata filled with chopped spinach, shallots and smoked ham. Artfully arranged atop a spill of tomato sauce. I didn't take pictures of yesterday's fried rice with egg and veggies, or yesterday's poached egg atop polenta. Because the damn cook did such a good job, I was punishing him by no piccies. (OK, I am not that merciless a wife. No piccies because too lazy.)
Here's the story of the Two-Sentence Poached Egg.
Cranky thinks he can barely remember if he's ever poached eggs in his previous life as a pretty decent cook. So he asked me how to do it, while I cuddled the puppy in bed.
I could go into detail of what I told him, but you all have your own methods, so who cares? I told him how I do it, really, really briefly.
In a couple of minutes, he came back and asked how long they should stay in the simmering water. I told him my opinion, which made him run back to the kitchen and save the (dammit!) yolks-still-runny, whites-perfectly-jelled eggs. In time. Pulled them out, blotted them and blopped them on the steaming, creamy polenta.
It's not supposed to happen this way.
But if you don't think I'm glad, you're mad!
I'm so glad.