Storm prep, soup. And a new cookbook

Always interested in new cookbooks just because you never know what great stuff you will discover, and I came across this one

She's an interesting person aside from her cooking cred, really high energy and off the charts smart.  The way she mentions quite casually some of the work she's done, and you think, whoah, she's good. Worth reading her intro.

I looked through and found this soup recipe that I could just see doing right off, particularly since a nor'easter, high winds and rain, is scheduled about now.

and did.  I will say that she's perhaps a little bit old school in that she talks about pouring the soup into a blender, rather than doing the safer thing, use your immersion blender.  And a lot of her recipes are lovely, but they literally make one serving. When she says solo she means it, aside from the occasional whole chicken for several days' use.   I tend to think that if I'm going to all that trouble, I may as well double or triple it and have a little something in the fridge for another day.

So that's what I did with this.  Used three cans of beans, all white, just what I had handy, increased the recipe liquid and the lemon juice.  But I didn't add the salt, since it tasted salty enough to my taste. This comes out creamy, and if you really like cream soups, it might suit you to skip the lemon in favor of cream to add in.  I think if you don't skip the lemon you may get cream cheese when you do the blending, lemon creating curds in cream. 

And if my food stylist had shown up, she could have snipped a few fronds of the new chives growing on the patio and scattered them artistically about, but she didn't, and this bowl is now history.  The next couple might get a chive treatment, though. Note the chunk of wholemeal bread to go with. The golden color comes from the chicken broth.

And there are a few other recipes worth a try in this book.  It's very appealing to read, lovely photography, done by a real food stylist. Some rather exotic ingredients I'm not sure about obtaining, but it's worth learning about them.

Just to catch up with world events, Feb 16 was my wedding anniversary, 1963, do the math, it's too many fingers and toes for me. Then February 27 was my forty-first birthday as a US citizen. Still working to do my bit to save it and help it all I can.  Full of hope that we can recover from our present trough and come back better.  And finally, it's St David's Day, leeks ahoy to our Welsh blogistas, and it's White Rabbits anyway.

So if that isn't enough to celebrate, I just don't know what is.