Soup, crackers, yogurt

I finally got around to making the soup I've been thinking about. 

Here's why, soup weather 

So I got out the bag of stock makings from the freezer, mostly cilantro and parsley stems, and decided to make a custom stock. This just means I added some Worcestershire sauce into it to simmer.

Then, the stock now aromatically set up, I did the usual onion, garlic, salt, bit of chili powder base and made cream of celery, cabbage, dandelion greens soup. 

A sprig of curry leaves starts to add flavor as soon as it touches the hot soup.  So this was lunch, with a toasted mini naan and cheddar cheese.

Then I was idly thinking about making yogurt because I'm out, and found other ideas than my usual cow's milk. There's a chickpea version. And an oat version. I could have done either and decided oat would be good to try.

Made oat "milk" in the blender then strained it to keep out the fibrous part. This is what the recipe lady said to do. I started with the usual squeeze it in a cotton cloth, like making paneer, but had a little mishap.

This resulted in a backfire of oat slurry over the cook, the counter, the sink etc.   So I regrouped and just strained it through a fine strainer. 

Pro tip:if you've got a small lake of oat slurry on a clean counter, and you're alone in the kitchen,  you can push it back into your container using your handy bench scraper. You're welcome.

Then bring the strained stuff to the boil then let it cool before adding starter, here some of the last of the current yogurt. This version gets really thick and creamy as it cools, so I'm hopeful. 

I'll let you know tomorrow how it worked.

Late addition, here's my breakfast oat yogurt with honey. Pretty good.

However, this left me with a bowl of the fibrous part that I'd strained out. And I thought, crackers? Haven't made them for ages, but I often fancy crackers with soup or cheese.

So I checked recipes and yes, you can make this into crackers. At least the recipes pretty much got me to where I was with the bowl of stuff, so I improvised after that.

Pinch baking powder, added flour to make it dough-like and rollable , dried basil bits, dried thyme bits, all mixed into dough, rolled out, scored into sort of squares, coarse seasalt pressed into the surface, and black pepper.

Few minutes in a hot oven, 400°f

Break them apart on the scored lines.  Crackers, now in an airtight tin.  What you might call collateral crackers. Or one damn recipe after another crackers. They're pretty good.  And my frugal heart loves the good food with nothing wasted aspect of all the cooking today.

I did walk today but it was grey and cold, not interesting enough for pictures, and I was glum.

The opposite of glum, though, are the nice people emailing with interest in a little bit of art in their mail. Most of the pieces are small. So I'll be getting myself organized to pick out what I think they'll like and send it off. There's plenty, if you came in late.  This is fun. My work travels more than I do.

Happy day, everyone! Soup if it's soup weather.

Ukraine is so happy we came through, finally.  The Pentagon,its act together, says weapons are ready to ship within a week of POTUS'  signature. P***n may be wondering what happened to his widgets in Congress. Good.