I suffer from a bizarre form of amnesia called
What can I make for dinner tonight?
It seems like a simple enough question, right? Especially for someone who
allegedly spends a great deal of time thinking about what to eat next. But there are days when I simply have no answer. It’s a dark day when thoughts of dessert get between
me and a grocery list. A
grocery list, dude. I know, right? I
stumble about my kitchen, flinging cupboard doors open and shut, to no avail. Peer into the fridge like it's an alien spaceship, nothing. I see cans of tomatoes and dried lentils in the pantry, no inspiration. The grocery store? Again. Nothing. In case you haven’t noticed,
that place is huge
and everything looks
so good. (Whole Foods, you know what you're doing.) I know how to shop for groceries. It’s not
that
hard. But there are days...I have no idea what I’m looking for. It’s as if my
brain is wired to "bake" and dinner it seems has been replaced by visions of banana cake slathered in cream cheese icing and brownie puddle tart. I can rattle off the ingredients for chocolate decadence cake in my sleep [12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, 4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate, 1 1/2 cups butter, melted, 1 3/4 cups white sugar, 1/2 cup water, 7 eggs, 2 cups whipped cream] but dinner?
pfffff! At this point, the little thingies in my head who run my sugar obsession are cracking beers, putting their feet up and taking bets [double or nothing we have brownies for dinner,
again]. Yes I know you may not believe me, but I'm trying hard to repave the pathways of my old routines.
So I grip the handle of the grocery cart confident it will get me from A to B, slowly rolling through my old haunts
bakery, wine section, seafood counter, cheese aisle, produce section...eventually it starts to come back to me. Leeks, zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms,
parsnips, potatoes, broccoli-oh yeah baby! vegetable soup! I go through phases with my soup making, but then that's just how I roll, like flossing, drinking afternoon tea, moisturizing daily, or going to bed early. I do these things religiously, for
days weeks on end. I live by them.
Great dental check-up. My skin looks fabulous! I am so well rested! I wonder why I don’t
always
do these things because sooner or later, and for no apparent reason, one of these habits will
fall out of my routine,
and then, without warning, I suddenly start doing it again...yep, I can be entertaining at times. So, making soup, it's kinda like that for me, it comes and goes, teeters and totters, ebbs
and flows, waxes and wanes, wibbles and wabbles.
Soup has a lot going for it, but what I really love about it is what it doesn't...guilt. Chock full of healthy ingredients. Easy to make. Plenty of left-overs. Versatile. Plus, all of the good stuff that you normally associate with making soups–veggie chopping therapy, the heady aroma of stock simmering, the way the
veggies plump and soften, the way the flavors mingle and play so well together, you know what I mean, there’s no need for me to go
on about it. As it is, I’m chowing down the stuff at the rate of about one batch per
week, and wondering how I possibly could have forgotten that
soup is “what I love to
cook eat.”
Naturally, after soup, there's dessert, as alluded to earlier in this post, banana cake with cream cheese frosting. Not just any banana cake with cream cheese frosting, but Ina's from her brand new cook book,
how easy is that? ,
and, and how can Ina be wrong?
Look upon it now,
this darling fluffette of a cake, so moist, not cloyingly sweet, and almost achingly satisfying. I swear when this cake is in the house it is all you can think about.
Blog Note:
Thank you to Abbie, for your guest appearance on this blog, as promised some time ago, the dogs will be guest blogging from time to time, this will of course depend on their schedules and we are also waiting for Molly to get her new fur-do
and they are both insisting on a photo shoot for new blog photos.
peace.
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