Four P Soup

Last year, when the Southerner proved that Black Thumb was a nickname from his past and he actually could grow food, I decided I better learn to cook all those veggies he was bringing home so I bought a cookbook called Perfect Vegetables (they didn't have a book called Perfect Squash). It turned out to be a fantastic cookbook and when I heard someone in the grocery store raving over parsnips (I always wondered what those white carrots were), I decided to buy some and give 'em a try since they were covered in the book. They were delicious and now I throw them in my roasted vegetables all the time.

Last week parsnips were on sale so I bought a bag of small, tender ones and this week, when it came time to pick a soup, I got online and did a Google search for "potato parsnip soup". It led me to this blog post by a woman named Annamaria, a Hungarian living in Texas. All I have to say is THANK YOU ANNAMARIA! This is a yummy soup and you should try it. She calls it Cream of Parsnip and Potato Soup, although I dubbed it Four P Soup because it has potatoes, parsnips, parsley, and I added (Hungarian) paprika for colour and also because I had some and it seemed like a good idea since it was a Hungarian soup.

If you look at this recipe and you think, "Oh, I'll use dried parsley and I don't have any lemon" I will say to you that your soup still will probably be pretty good, but it will be outstanding if you make the effort to get the fresh parsley, toss it with the fresh lemon juice, and olive oil and serve as suggested. Because there are a lot of people at SS, I don't really like to stand around giving directions about adding garnish, so I just dumped all the parsley/lemon/olive oil mixture right into the soup and that worked fine.

We had a lot of people today, ten in fact, plus us and it was sort of a madhouse of laughter and good food and good company. Very nice. The Southerner has a gimp in his giddy-up from a spill on his bike, so he got lots of attention, although I'm not sure it was the kind he really wanted! Much of it had to do with how he should take it easy (not in his nature), how ribs take weeks to heal (also not what he wanted to hear), and lots of advice about whether riding his bike home after his fall was really the best choice (too late now). He will recover eventually and in the meantime, he's volunteered to taste anything I care to cook. He's a keeper, that one. I'm glad I get to keep him.

Have a fun week and if you ride your bike, know that it's not necessary to take your hand off the handlebars to wave at the neighbour, thus hitting black ice, and going down. Your neighbour will understand...even if you are a southerner and it's the southern way to wave and be friendly!