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.

Hardanger, applique, fast food, and tea

While I was pawing through materials in search of the Tunisian crochet hook, about which more later, I found this sample of hardanger I stitched yea these many years ago.

I dyed it with tea to knock down the whiteness and age it a bit.

And here's where we are with the stitching

Some sashiko got in there. One more block and that's the first of three columns completed.

Meanwhile upstairs the rug is coming along. 

I'm seeing the end of the supply of roving now, which, as much as the warp length, may dictate the size. The wire needle is okay, but a bit flexible, so today I'm going to use one of my long Tunisian crochet hooks to draw weft through, and we'll see.

Handsome son visited yesterday for tea, card, present and plum crumble on the patio, lovely afternoon. When I mentioned the rug, he instantly said how will you make it nonskid, joining the chorus who are convinced I'm going to crash out and break something as soon as I step on it. I think I'll stitch some of that nonskid shelf lining to it.

Later Gary presented me with a bunch of fresh cut celery, the stems of which are a bit bitter, but they're now in the stock bag in the freezer, while the leaves are also bagged and frozen for future cream of celery soup.

Caro, this one's for you, fast food for lunch, sharp cheddar and foraged tomatoes on toast, romaine side. 

With the hand hemmed napkin formerly lost under the old fridge.

A couple of people were unfamiliar with the honesty plant whose seedpods I showed you yesterday, so here's more

It's a pretty flower in spring, then lovely seedpods later.

Happy day, everyone, and when a recipe says cups, tablespoons, etc, they're statutory measurements, not just whatever spoon or cup you have lying about! This has come up in rl and online. It's the English language getting everyone all confused again. 

Enjoy your Sunday,  well, Monday for some and go Spain!! First time winners of the World Cup.  What a day for them. Close, tense match. Class play.

,

There's always soup

 After a stressful week, what with one thing and fifty others, I made a lovely pot of cream of celery soup this morning.  With a teaspoonful of Bill Veach's Curry Powder Mix, you mix it yourself from his recipe. And added milk at the end, and a dash of lemon juice.

And for lunch I had a bowl with a slice of wholewheat bread.  And pronounced it good for what ailed me.

Aside from Richard Rohr, whose The Art of Letting Go accompanies my weaving and whatever else I'm doing with fiber, because he's talking about contemplation, and at this stage in the jacket, it's contemplative work, I've found a new reader to listen to.

The Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to be exact.  It seems unlikely to have him as my reader, but I got there by circuitous paths.  I originally got onto their YouTube channel in search of a series of excellent lectures on Julian of Norwich, given by Dean Emma last name escapes me, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on Julian.  I was interested in knowing more about a mystic contemplative hermit, and learned a lot.  Including the fact that hermits get a lot more company, largely people in search of spiritual guidance, than we might think.  Also that she had a cat, who could come and go by the window in her walled up little room.  And how contemplation in solitude works.

Anyway, once on that website, I found that the Dean has a very young relative who can't visit at the moment because of lockdown restrictions, so he's reading The Wind in the Willows partly for her, partly for any other kid such as me, who wants to listen.  

It's peaceful, hearing him, in his agonizingly correct English, tell the story.  I love the first chapter, of Mole and the springcleaning and giving up and going out because it was better in the sunshine.  There are parts I don't like, such as Mr Toad, I find him very unsettling and distressing so I skip him.  But I love the carol singing fieldmice and Mr. Badger, living alone and liking it. And a lot of other things.  I've pretty much given up on analyzing the agenda of the whole work, as I used to, and just enjoy what's there on the surface. I know about the implications, and I'm good with all of it. 

So that's the evening listening at the moment.  Except that this evening is for a movie.  Searching for Bobby Fischer, which you can scarcely recognize after the library has finished stickering it and stamping it, and generally ruining a lovely design, anyway, this is what I'll watch tonight

I don't think you need to know chess to watch this one, either, just as you can enjoy The Queen's Gambit without knowing much, if anything, about chess.

But where are the Misfits, you ask?  Usually we come in here today and find a mass of vegetables strewn across the countertop.  This week the weather stepped in and put back the deliveries all over the place, particularly produce that might have originated in the south during their bitter cold spell.  Tomorrow, they tell me, it will arrive. Well, it won't suffer from the heat on the way, anyway.

So it will be a Saturday Salad instead, this time around.

Short term freezing

Making celery soup, with scallions and potatoes, cashew cheese whey, yogurt whey, chicken stock, onions, garlic, white pepper, kosher salt.

 You'll notice that a couple of these ingredients have been in the freezer only briefly. 

So why freeze them at all? It takes the pressure off, so if I didn't feel like using the celery (half of it in fact), soon, I wouldn't risk wasting it.  This happens fairly often around here. And there's half a bag back in the freezer now.

Ready for lunch. And pretty good. Plenty for the freezer.

And I test-ate a plum last night, very good, will make a good Marian Burros plum torte or tart depending on where you saw the recipe.

I'll freeze them till I need a dessert. Plenty of banana bread right now. So now you know intestate means never sampled her food, or something. Yes, yes, I know the Latin words, used to teach Latin, where was I..

Update on the outside faucet: dripping steadily. I'd put a bucket under, so I used the drips to water houseplants.

Then upstairs to the valve for another tightening episode, with rubber glove for traction. A bit better now. I think I'll have to do this at intervals to keep the line shut. 

Gardening chat with neighbor last evening, he wanted a plant like my blazing chrysanthemum. I don't like abbreviating plant names as if they were my toys, so I had used the full name.

 He said well, I was looking at the garden store, and all I saw were mums. I explained it's the same so now he's going to get a couple.  Didn't mean to confuse the issue. 

I've already knocked off using the Latin names for plants, which comes more readily than common American names which are different from Brit names, so I have to keep learning.

Celery soup

I've been thinking about celery for a while, yes, I know, I should get a life, but it's one of those vegetables that a single person thinks twice about buying.

 It comes in a head, where I shop, and that's a lot. Particularly when said person isn't a fan of it eaten raw. Like fennel, I'd rather have it some other way.

Anyway, the Asian store had a  nice display, so I bought a head, rinsed, chopped into little halfmoons, included the leaves, and froze it a couple of days ago.

This is good, because today when I thought I'd like soup, there it was. I rarely feel like doing the entire prep at one time. I'm my own sous-chef, works well.

So the recipe specified a whole head, and s big spud, which I had. Onions and garlic always in the freezer. Plain yogurt ready, too. Chicken broth.

So here's my first celery soup in quite a while.

In the same old dishes. My food stylist would probably have used different ones, fancy accessories, different table even. But she never showed, so here it is.
And it's really good. I've no doubt it's very good food, but mainly I'm really liking it.

I do like having soup in the freezer. It's my food security. And the freezing didn't affect flavor at all, in fact preserved it. Texture didn't matter because I was going to blend it anyway.

So you may want to try it. Many recipes online. Interestingly, none of my fancy print cookbooks had a recipe for celery soup.

They're all about celeriac, maybe that was the primo thing at the time. It reinforces my willingness to donate cookbooks, other than my own collection in a binder and a couple with sentimental meaning. People love to have them. They're welcome.

Gardening soup and books Part Two

There was no room in part one for the soup and books, so they're here now.

I was presented with a head of celery, a bunch of fresh garlic and other veggies a few days ago, by a friend going away and wanting them to go to a good home.

I made the garlic into lovely roasted garlic butter when I roasted the veg  for Friday's dinner, same temp and time, and scooped out the middles, plus some flavored olive oil and used an old spice jar to store it. You can just spread it with a knife. Big chunk into today's celery soup. Along with boiled redskin potatoes left from the roasting to use now, plus the yogurt whey and asparagus water from the freezer. Chicken broth powder, salt, diced onion, milk powder. several sprigs of fresh thyme.

I blended it just a bit, but kept the texture. The pic is before I took out the thyme and simmered, then blended.And it is really good. I like to have soup around, for when I don't feel like cooking much.

And reading awaited all this activity. Irish writers, Edna O'Brien short stories, and this book obligingly acted as a background for pic of Dorset buttons in my other blog, Beautiful Metaphor.  The Joyce is Portrait of the Artist etc, read before but rereading for next book group meeting.

Food of all kinds today. And season two of Delicious to watch this evening.