Soup's On

My Dad was never the chief cook in my household as a young child.  That is, of course, until he found his niche . He is a soup and stew man.  He makes all sorts of soups and stews and, if you're Rachael Ray, you'll even appreciate that he makes the occasional "stoup."  He is best known among family and friends for his chicken noodle, vegetable and chili varieties.  However, I have loved his potato, corn, celery and others, too.

Upon the discovery that Dad not only was good at making soups, but also that he actually enjoyed doing so, Mom was only too happy to hand over the reins for Chief Chef from approximately October-February.  (Not that Mom doesn't also do her share of cooking during those months, but it's just too much of a convenience to have soup made for the week to spend so much extra time in the kitchen).  I should add, too, that Dad and I share a love for being able to prepare foods that taste good without having to be exceptionally pretty.  We find great joy and freedom in being able to just cut up some stuff and dump it into a big pot.  And so, it should come as no real surprise that I, too, have taken quite a liking to making soups.  So much so, in fact, that I have already made three or four new soup recipes this season, and have three more on the menu for the coming week alone!  Joe and I have had a few soups that we have really enjoyed (our lentil soup, for example) and have tried a few that require some tweaking (the cheese had some melting issues in the broccolli soup), but have great potential.  In my 2.5+ years of marriage, I've made very few dinners that were undeniably in the "bust" category, but the most recent example was the black bean soup I made, using a recipe I found on the internet.  I thought that the recipe had enough credentials in that comment after comment seemed to indicate that this was The Best Soup Ever.  I am here to promise you that that was not the case.  And it wasn't my fault--there was nothing that I could have done differently to turn this soup from Dud to Stud.  It was far too liquidy (even though I pureed some of the beans to thicken it); it had a ratio of about 7 billion onions to every 1 bean, and it was just awful.  I love Panera's black bean soup, but it certainly isn't very cost effective to just buy that in gallons--so, with that in mind, who has a recipe they can give to me?

In other news, my quest to read the entire Bible in a year is off to a good start, as is my goal to complete six knitting projects--my first one is entirely done, with the exception of binding it off (which is how it is truly finished and safe from unraveling).  I have given more thought to the specifics of the home repair work that I want to do, and have concluded that I both want and need to come up with a list of very detailed work that I would like to complete over the course of the year, assign a time frame to each item on the list, and then email it (or post it here!) for all to peruse; hopefully, from there, a few generous souls will decide that they really would rather not take an afternoon nap, opting, instead to install a new light fixture where none currently exists in the master bedroom...