I often wonder why the second is so difficult. No I'm not talking about Elliot, though he does tend to be a challenge. I'm talking about the second... well anything. It seems that I always get so nervous and worked up over the first of something. The first day of school, the first meeting, the first time going some place new. And then the first time always goes so smoothly. But then we get to the second, and it all blows up. Well, that might be an exaggeration. But it's never as good as the first.
Two days ago I made another one of your recipes. It was the second, yes the dreaded second. Now as far as being food was concerned, it went really well. But as far as being a topic for these letters, it didn't go so well. Hmmmm, let me see if I can explain.
When I made banana bread I made it with April. We talked through the whole process, talked a lot about you and how we used to make banana bread together, and I even took pictures to show you.
With this recipe I didn't have April's help at all, I didn't have anyone to talk to, and I forgot to take pictures. Though we have a chance tomorrow since there is one serving left, and Elliot loves it!!
Johnny has been giving Elliot canned soup. And I am totally against that. There is so much sodium and preservatives in canned soup, that I didn't want him feeding it to a little boy. So I said I would make some soup.
I went through the handful of your recipes that I've placed in your small wooden box (having taken them out of the red cookie tin) and quickly found a recipe for vegetable soup. I got all the ingredients and realized that most of the prep would be chopping. I had to tell April that she couldn't help me with that. She got a little mopey and decided to watch a movie instead of helping me later on.
I did not, I will admit follow your recipe. I sauteed the veggies prior to putting them in the soup pot. Why? Because I have a fear that if I don't sautee something in olive oil and add garlic it will have no flavor. Sorry about that Gram, but phobia's are hard to get around.
But other then that I did stick to the recipe. Right down to cooking the bacon and then cooking the onions in the bacon fat. And then adding the onions and bacon fat to the pot.
Now Johnny loves bacon more then any man really should love a food. But when he heard that there is no stock for the soup, just water, he said it wouldn't taste good. When it was all done he agreed that it tasted good. But he also agreed with me. You see I had a sneaky suspicion that all the tasty goodness in the soup (and there was a lot of tasty goodness) came from the massive amount of fat/oil in it. So in actuality I did talk about you for a minute. I may have wondered aloud how you managed to not weigh 400lbs with recipes like this one.
So yes, I made your vegetable soup with bacon Gram. And we loved it. Elliot has had it at least once a day since I made it (the potatoes are his favorite), along with his daily helping of wood (he's been eating his crib). And tomorrow someone will eat the last serving for lunch. But I won't be making this recipe again, at least not without some major alterations and substitutions.
If nothing else it will save me some labor. The next day I had to take a very large amount of congealed fat off the top. Not something I want to do before eating!!
It was difficult making the soup, but it was a labor of love. The only issue is that now Johnny expects me to make an endless assort of soups for Elliot (wink wink, nudge nudge). I wonder if this could be made into a Monty Python sketch. I think I'll have English Land Army girls working at a lunch counter and every time some one goes through the gigantic list of soups, they'll break out singing/chanting "soup, soup, soup, soup".
A lesson for my children... Grandma's soup is better then Spam, though maybe not as funny.
Love
E
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