Soupa! Soupa! Soupa! Cabbages!

Good soup quick is one of the finest arts of the kitchen, and it has taken me many years to get to the point where I think I make a decent soup. I can point to several landmarks along the way; my mother’s extraordinary stews which were fragrant and filling, my dear friend Caroline Blackwood’s finishing technique for any fish soup, and one very special afternoon spent with a little friend’s babysitter – Mi lai from Vietnam, in which we made a pot of Pho. (I don’t think I’ll ever recover from the amazing flavours of that one!)

I’d like to offer here a humble cabbage soup. Cabbage because it’s bountiful right now and cheap as dirt, even the yummy organic stuff.  I can get a small organic head for a little more than a buck! Now this soup is made a little bit differently than you might expect – exquisitely chopped veggies are not added to a heady broth to cook, oh no! Quite the opposite. This is also not a carefully measured recipe for you to follow with perfect results. You’ve got to use your head and trust your instincts and get comfortable with the food.

First you need stock. The cheapest is of course the stock you make yourself from leftovers in the bone department. If you don’t have that habit, get into it. At the very least, take the roast chicken leftovers, including the brown bits from the pan, and boil it up with onion and carrot, strain it and throw it in the freezer. Another time we’ll talk about stock, but suffice it to say that I have some nice veal stock put aside made when our market suddenly decided to put out a batch of veal neck bones for 1.48 a pack.

You will need 4 cups of stock of your choice

Small head of cabbage

Carrot or two

Tomatos – that left over half a can sitting in the fridge

Rice – also left over because you never throw food away, right?

One large onion

Lentils – about a cup cooked

Cider vinegar, One bay leaf, salt & pepper and any other herbs you like

In a large pot, saute in olive oil or butter, the cabbage, onion, carrots, bay leaf, salt and pepper and herbs. Let these veggies get almost to the point of carmelization,  when the aroma of the veggies and herbs reaches its peak intensity. Now add a tablespoon or so of cider vinegar. Zowie, the sound of the sizzle, and suddenly you have ramped up the intensity of the aroma to a heady level. When this calms down a bit, add the tomatoes, breaking them up a little in the pot. Now add your stock and stir. Let everything simmer nicely for about 5-10 minutes, then add lentils and rice (these are already cooked so they only require warming time. Simmer another 5-10 minutes. Serve with grated parmesan and bread and butter on the side. 

I like this method because the veggies retain much of their character and flavour, rather than becoming a tasteless, amorphous mass. Try it. Substitute as you will. Enjoy.

Too Busy Being Broke

Wow, long time no see, y’all. Yes, it’s true – we’ve been too busy being broke to write and our sense of humor went on hiatus, but we think we can hack it now. Well ok we think so this minute. But the sheer magnitude of the broke-ness here is down right hilarious and surely we are not alone, so maybe we can ha-ha laugh together. We can look back on these days with nostalgia and maybe even sentimental scorn. Actually, cancel the scorn. That sounds like tempting fate to do it to us all over again! 

So stick around for our stellar humor as we go into diary format to bring you the best of the daily struggle. Add some of your own. And feel good that you are not alone – that our lawyer and accountant and banking and retail friends are contemplating varying levels of ain’t got no dough.

Pots & Pots of Tea for 50¢ a Month

  Thats POTS, not cups. If you’re like me, tea and coffee are a big deal in the house. I mean, you can scrimp on so many things but a nice cup of tea at the right time of day, or good morning joe, are kinda sacred. Used to be I would kill for a big package of Barry’s Irish Tea and stalk the aisles of many stores to find someplace that carried it regularly. I like the green box blend, even though the gold box blend is supposed to be better. But it’s like eight dollars for fifty tea bags, and who can afford that now?  So I began to check out buying loose tea by the pound, or half pound in my case. As it happens, my daughter had given me a nice heart shaped tea strainer, and we already have assorted pots, so equipment wise I was set. So far, I’m immensely pleased with three tea purchases. The first was a bag of tea, one pound, that I bought in a Turkish market in a strip mall, for two dollars. I don’t know the name because I can’t read Turkish. But it was the tea that was almost sold out among all the tea in the market, so I figured it was a best seller and what the heck. It’s great – strong with a slight hint of smoke, but very slight, like you almost wouldn’t notice. Next, at a local, mostly organic market I found that they carried loose tea in their bulk section. Organic to boot! It was eight dollars a pound and I bought half a pound of Golden Assam, and half a pound of Earl Grey. Fabulous, both of them! A word on amounts. Loose tea swells up to triple it’s  bulk. In my three cup pot, I only need three quarters of a teaspoon of tea to make a strong, fragrant brew. Let it steep at least five minutes. Just leave it be, people! Get used to doing without tea bags, and you have amazing tea for pennies a cup every month and it’s even better quality tea than you used to drink. (Unless you were drinking Barry’s, of course.) Imagine that. Pretty damn cool.