You may assume from that first sentence that I seldom, if ever, buy soup; the boughten soup always has much too much salt in it for me. I don’t even have any salt in the house, which everyone, including those rare visitors who might be around for a meal, is aware of.
The easy to make soups are usually bean, mushroom with barley, and soups of that ilk. I try to have enough on hand just to pull one out of the freezer when I don’t have anything else in the house to eat for supper. Now and then, however, I decide I want a change from those old stand-bys, and go to something else.
I did this yesterday, Sunday, having in mind that I would not only construct the soup, but also make bread, forgetting that, these days, I can seldom do more than one thing in any given day. I pulled out the recipe for potato and red pepper soup that my friend in Panama had sent me. I had made it once before, so I knew that I liked it.
This recipe has quite a few vegetables in it; all of which require fine chopping or dicing, which I do the hard way, by hand, even though the hand blender comes in at the end to mix everything together.
I can sit in my chair, veggies piled up on my little table along with the cutting board, and two knives. I went at it and even I, knowing how slow I am, was surprised at how long this part of the task took.
My son and daughter-in-law came down and did some more moving for me, bringing a dresser downstairs to my most recent bedroom, and moving the file cabinet over so I could put the commode beside it.
I was still chopping veggies while they came, did this job, and went again.
I gave Sam his lunch on time (he insists on it), and kept on chopping. I don’t even know how long it all took me, but it was several hours before I could get the kettle out and start putting the ingredients together. At least the veggies were finally cut up.
I hadn’t had any lunch, but I did need a cup of refreshing tea about then, so I took a break. I wasn’t dressed yet, either, but that waited, too, until the soup was bubbling away happily for its requisite 45 minutes; until the potatoes were soft enough for the blender.
In that time, I got dressed and went up to get the Sunday paper.
Sam doesn’t understand why he has no mail on Sunday, since the mail person leaves him a biscuit every day with the rest of our mail. I’ve tried to explain it to him, but he forgets what I tell him all too easily.
I got out my blender, mixed everything together, added a bit of half-and-half and some basil and dill, and this especially time-consuming soup was finished.
Although I enjoyed something else for supper last night, I will give myself a big bowl of it tonight, along with a slice of the bread I’m making today. I was so exhausted when I had built the soup yesterday, I was incapable of another thing. I didn’t even get out to see how my bedroom looked (it looks very nice; the dresser helps) until later, when I was ready to crawl into bed, all tuckered out from my efforts.
Now all I have to do is find time to go back upstairs to retrieve some clothes to put into it, but that will be another day, when I will force myself to have only one thing to do.
