The Crowd

If you've been following SS from the beginning, or you skip down to the very first post and read about how we got started, you will find out that it's based on an idea from the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. In the Betsy books she has a regular group of friends who she hangs out with and they are always referred to as "The Crowd". Today, Our Crowd was here for Sunday Soup. Plus a few newbies. We had eleven friends join us today, and two who were definitely, positively coming and then didn't because...wait for it...because IT IS SNOWING AGAIN. Yes. Again. Here. In western Canada where it does not snow for three weeks in a row. Or even three days. But snow it did, and we've already got several inches and it's STILL SNOWING.

Normally, I don't complain about the weather, but quite honestly, I feel like it's my duty if I want to fit into The Crowd. Apparently, complaining about the weather here is even more popular than hockey! I know, hard to believe, but true. I heard people complain about the snow, the temperature, and even the summer (or lack of it, which is entirely exaggerated) tonight and not one person even mentioned hockey. Hmmm...I wonder if these are real Canadians in our crowd? Now that I think about it, there's me and The Southerner, clearly not from around these parts, The Musician is half & half (Canadian/American), there is The Irish One, and The Brits...I guess it's okay that hockey never came up since probably half of us don't know anything about it anyway. But whoohee can we talk about the weather. In fact, maybe we should refer to it as THE WEATHER since it's such a popular subject.

What? You want to hear about the soup? Oh, okay. Today I made a wonderful broccoli and toasted almond soup. Earlier this week, I made it for supper and The Southerner was so impressed with it that he thought I should make it for SS. Organic broccoli was on sale, so I decided to go for it. Just so you know, steaming enough broccoli to make vast amounts of soup can be done in your big pasta insert that goes in your 9 quart stock pot. The soup itself is easy enough, but I don't have enough big pans, so I was making stock, then transferring it to a bowl while I steamed the broccoli, then transferring the broccoli with some stock to the blender and back to the pot and back to the bowl and into another bowl and then the blender and then...okay, yeah...I pretty much lost control of the soup there for a while. The Southerner did exactly what he should have done...he made a run for it and hid in his office until it was finished.

Oh....power's about to go...posting quickly...more later.