Annual holiday get-togethers always feature a grand cast of characters. This year the wise-cracking drunk, the overly sensitive cook, the gushing sentimentalist, the determined wanderer, the eager helper, the laissez faire parent and the bad conversationalist all made an appearance. And that was just me. Alas, I am still in the process of discovering myself. […]
I found artichokes priced three for a dollar the other day, and that, without further adornment, was the genesis of this week’s soup. As someone who claims to do improv in the kitchen, I take inspiration from ingredients I find at the grocery store. Yet because my efforts result in spectacular failures on occasion, price […]
The soup this week was something of a command performance. My wife and I are co-hosting a fund-raising dinner with another couple on Saturday and we wanted to offer jars of soup as a take away for the attendees. To be honest, co-hosting may be too generous a term. The couple we’re working with are […]
I was looking through the blog archives this week (Oh, the memories…) and discovered that I’ve categorized twenty-two of my thirty soups as vegetarian. (Sorry, I haven’t gone so far as to classify which are vegan (some), or ovo-lacto vegetarian (most), or even pesco-vegetarian (none, yet). Please bear with me.) Now, before you start asking […]
After a summer’s worth of Olympian games, my youngest is finally finishing up the Percy Jackson series.* To celebrate I decided to take The Soup Blog Greek… again. And no, this isn’t a re-run. Remember Spanakopita Soup? Good stuff, huh? Well this recipe is even fresher, though more “of the people,” not so overpowering and […]
When I was a kid, my mother got me to eat celery by slathering a layer of peanut butter across the top. When I learned to cook, I discovered that celery was part of the holy trinity of veggies that make up mirepoix (onions and carrots being the other two), the base for a lot […]
I grew up eating avocadoes. My grandfather was an orange rancher in Orange County back when there still were oranges in the OC. The orange juice from his trees is still the best I’ve ever tasted, but it was the few avocado trees he had in his orchard that I think of more often. Snacks […]
My wife, the girls and I were in the San Bernardino Mountains last week, enjoying a little time with the California branch of the family. That means that this week’s soup blog is coming to you from the road. My brother and sister-in-law’s backyard to be precise, as I am currently locked out […]
Out West, when I thought about corn, the vegetable took several different forms. There were corn tortillas, corn bread, corn salsa, tamale pie, corn chowder (remember that one?), corn muffins, corn chips, and, in summertime, corn on the cob. Here in the Midwest, it’s pretty much just corn on the cob, but boy do we […]
