A cracking good time

Today I rebelled and didn't make any bread! Okay, that's actually a lie. I did make a loaf of bread, but I hid it under a towel because it is our daily bread and wasn't intended for Sunday Soup. Instead, I made crackers! Yes, crackers!

The Southerner and I periodically take a hard look at our diet and try to change a few things to improve it. The truth is, we probably eat healthier than most people, but there's always room for improvement. We do cook almost all our own food and we're vegetarian so even if we do eat out, we haven't had fast food in like...well, since the last time we drove cross country and had to get pizza slices at a rest stop in Wyoming (which I don't recommend). We also hope to never eat another cheese sandwich from Subway, but I digress. Anyway, recently we talked about what we eat and the whole processed food thing came up again. I am not ready to give up on my faux hotdogs, but when The Southerner suggested I try making crackers, I jumped on it.

He thought the dough I use for pizza crust would be good. It's not. I tried it, thinking he might be right, but yeast does not belong in crackers. So I got out my handy How to Cook Everything Vegetarian cookbook (a fave!) and found the recipe for crackers. Soooooo easy!!! And so much fun to make I couldn't stop. After six batches The Southerner finally had to stop me.

"Just because you can make them, doesn't mean you need to supply the whole island!"

Okay, he didn't really say that, but when I suggested making just one more batch, he did roll his eyes. Here are my flavour combos: plain (like an English water cracker), whole wheat and cumin (my least favourite), Parmesan and Italian herb (the best one - made two batches), Aleppo peppers with cornmeal subbed for part of the flour (spicey and yummy), and rosemary and black pepper (a good idea, but it needed more of both seasonings). I highly recommend checking out both this cookbook and this recipe. Or drop by my Facebook page because I wrote it all up there.

In addition to cutting back on our processed food (goodbye potato chips, so long bottled dressing, see ya later Barbara's jalepeno and blue cheese cheet-o-like thingies), we have chosen a few veggies to add to our diet. Being vegetarians, we naturally eat a lot of veggies, but there are some we have avoided because they don't really appeal to us. Bell peppers, eggplant, beets, and sweet potatoes are a few foods that neither of us have ever really wanted to eat, so we didn't.

I can safely say we probably won't voluntarily eat eggplant because it makes my throat itch and The Southerner's not that fond of it. However, lately we've added red, yellow, and orange peppers into our diet, last summer we ate beets from The Fix-it Guy and The Fleece Lady's garden, and today I made Sweet Potato Soup for SS. It was FABULOUS! I may not take any sweet potatoes with marshmallows on Thanksgiving, but I will make this soup again.

It came from The Ultimate Soup Cookbook (Reader's Digest) and let me tell you that this is probably the best soup cookbook I have found. I think I've made about ten soups from it and every one of them was great. I often make alterations, but several of these I've made really close to the actual recipe and they have turned out fantastic. This book is certainly making me look like a better cook than I am. And here's a tip, if you want a copy, try ebay. I got a brand new copy there for $13 plus shipping.

It was a little quieter here this week than last week at Mum & Dad's! The Neighbour informed me that up until last week, we were the only two with perfect attendance, and now I've missed a SS and she's the only one who's been here every single Sunday since May! I said, "Hey! Last week at Mum's, I made four soups and five kinds of bread, plus the soup y'all had here! That's got to count for something!" but she's sticking to her story. So alas, I am no longer perfect. I know, that's a shock to all who know me.

Until next week...eat lots of soup!

Lost - my favourite hat!

Hi All,
I meant to include this note in last week's post, but forgot. When my grandmother arrived at SS she commented on my grey fleece hat being a "chef's hat". I'd forgotten I was wearing it and quickly took it off and threw it in the bedroom that we were staying in for our visit. Well...that also ended up being the bedroom where everyone put their coats. When SS was over, my favourite hat was gone!

If anyone ended up getting home with it and you're wondering whose it is, it's mine! I really love that hat, so I'm willing to trade you some secret recipes for its safe return, no questions asked. If you love it so much you can't part with it (which I totally understand), you can get one right there in Portland because that's where they're made by Cagoule Fleece. Hmmm...I was just over at their site and they're having a sale. I gotta go...

Sunday Soup on the Road

Hello All! The reason I'm posting late this week is because SS was on the road and I didn't really want to advertise on the internet that we were away from home. We're back now, so now I can tell y'all all about it!

The Southerner and I went to visit The Parents (road trip!). Mum asked me if I would mind doing SS on Friday night since we were scheduled to head home on Saturday, but we decided it would be more fun to change our dates and have SS at their house. It was a much bigger deal than our usual SS here on the island as Mum had invited about sixty people! Although we were sorry they didn't all come, it was a bit of a relief too because that's a lot of soup and bread! As it is, I think there was probably around thirty people and we made four soups and five loaves of bread.

My grandmother, who follows these posts regularly and LOVES soup even more than I do requested French Onion, which I made for her with Swiss cheese toasts to go in it. I made the White Bean with Spinach and Sundried Tomatoes (from a few weeks ago) for the crockpot, and Julia Child's potato-leek soup (fabulous and sooo simple) in Mum's pot. Those are all soups I've made before though, so I had to have a new one too. I asked my eight year old niece what she would like and she said "spinach?", so that's what I made.

She wanted a cream of spinach and I'd just bought that fabulous soup cookbook that I mentioned a few months ago here and sure enough, there was a cream of spinach soup recipe. I have to admit that it is probably not a recipe I could afford to make up here, but since Mum was footing the bill, I jumped all over the opportunity. Plus, because we had three other soups, we didn't have to make a lot of it, just enough. If I served it here as the only soup, I think it would cost me about $30 or so for seven or eight quarts. I have to be more economical than that, but maybe in the summer when I can use fresh spinach that The Southerner grew instead of frozen, I will be able to afford that.

Anyway, it turned out really lovely. It has celery and leeks in it (and spinach, of course) and veggie stock and you puree it and add cream (I used Silk). The unusual bit that made it particularly good was the seasoning. It calls for mint and marjoram, plus the usual (salt and pepper). Very, very tasty.

My cousin Zach, who is also eight, was not impressed with any of the soups (pesky vegetables!), but I promised not to repeat what he said the spinach soup looked like! It made me laugh though, as no one's ever described any of my soups quite that way. To his credit, he did try it, although I think it burned his tongue, so he probably wasn't the best judge of the taste. Poor Zach, he had a hard SS because my friend Dawn brough fancy chocolate bars and he got a mouthful of one of them before anyone told him it had dried mushrooms in it. Yeah...mushrooms! I helped him rinse out the sink after he spit that out! I could feel his pain!!! Luckily, I don't like dark chocolate, so I didn't accidentally eat any. Mushrooms are fine in soup, but in chocolate? Pass.

As for the guests, it was very exciting! It was mostly family, with a few friends for good measure. Hmmm...maybe there was only one friend there, now that I think about it. The other one that was supposed to come called at 7:15pm saying that she'd gone into Ikea at 3:45 and just found her way out again. That's happened to us too, which is why we stay far away from there!

Anyway, there were several branches of the family. My parents, my dad's sisters and some of my cousins, my dad's aunts and some of his cousins, my grandmother, my mum's brothers and sister, my cousins on that side, kids of some of my cousins, my brother, my niece, and of course me and The Southerner. In case you didn't know this, The Southerner is an only child and looked a little dazed by four generations, but he held up reasonably well!

Anyway, it was really fun and on the way home, The Southerner and I decided that we'd try and make a January trip next year and have a big Sunday Soup down there again (don't worry, Mum, we'll visit before then too)! Oh, and lest any of you were worried about people showing up here at home and wondering where we were, we had that covered too. The Brits and The Neighbour hosted a very quiet SS here...well, I don't actually know how quiet they were, but there was only the three of them, and if they were noisy, well...the cats are cool and didn't say a mumblin' word*.

Sunday Soup has taught me a lot of things, but probably the most important is that "it is what it is". What I mean by that is there is no reason to worry if you have enough soup, or plenty of bread, or how many people are coming... You just make the food, clean the house to the best of your ability without it being an all-day process, and you enjoy yourself. I have never run out of soup or bread yet, but I can honestly say that someday I probably will, just because more people come than I have soup for, and when that day comes, I'll just offer everyone another cup of tea and the conversation will go on...that's what it's about, right? Gathering together with people you love and having a good time.


*A slightly mangled line from Hoyt Axton's song Della and the Dealer.

Tuesday

Hi All.
I will update SS on Tuesday. I'll explain why then. Hope you had a great weekend!

Leave those skins on...

Yesterday when I came home from the grocery store The Southerner and The Fix-it Guy were working on the bathroom drains (because you couldn't really call them drains anymore since they didn't). Actually, The Fix-it Guy was working on the drains and The Southerner was "standing by" just in case. Hehe. Anyway, The Southerner went into the kitchen for a something (probably more tea - standing by is a very thirsty job) and saw the ten pounds of potatoes I'd bought.

The Southerner: Potatoes on sale?
Me: Nope. They're for the soup and guess what? The recipe calls for them to be peeled.
The Southerner: ALL OF THEM!!! You've got to be kidding me!!!!

You see, the reason he reacted so strongly is because if you'll recall, I cannot peel potatoes. I had a major allergic reaction last summer when I peeled potatoes for soup. The Southerner is now the designated potato peeler. From down the hall (and under the sink), The Fix-it Guy yelled out, "Don't peel them! The peelings are the best part!"

The truth is that while I had already decided to adapt the recipe somehow so that they did not all have to be peeled, I had to make The Southerner sweat just a little bit.

Me: They have to be peeled. That's how the recipe works!

He didn't really fall for it though because he knows I've never followed a recipe to the letter in my life. In the end, he was right not to worry because I totally made up the soup. I did have him peel about ten large potatoes. I got sent to my room (office) while he was doing it because I had the audacity to try and explain to him why he was going to cut himself if he kept using the potato peeler the way he was using it the potatoes were making me sneeze, even though he was doing the peeling.

The rest of the scrubbed potatoes I rubbed with olive oil and salt and then baked on a sheet pan at 450 for about an hour. I boiled the potatoes that he peeled and then pureed them with the water and some carmelized onion to make a base for the soup. Then I chopped the baked potatoes, added them to it, added more water, seasonings and a whole lot of shredded cheddar cheese, some chives, and thinned it with a little vegetable stock. Just in case you're wondering why I used ten pounds of potatoes when I wasn't expecting very many people today, it's because I made nearly nine quarts of soup.

I made nine quarts because someone asked me to do Sunday Soup at their house for their family next week and I agreed. Although we spread the word to our regulars that we wouldn't be here, we didn't see everyone this week, so The Neighbour and The Brits are planning on defrosting half of this week's soup (which I intend to freeze tomorrow) and hosting their own SS here, just in case anyone shows up. So essentially there will be two Sunday Soups next week. You're welcome to join us at either of them, but of course you have to know where to go...I can't really post that info here!

Today we had a small, but fun group. There was me, The Southerner, The Brits, The Neighbour, The Fix-it Guy and The Fleece Lady, and The Real Estate Agent (Extraordinaire) here. The bread was the no-knead type, with a garlic and herb ribbon (how's that for fancy? It means I spread it out on the board as dough, brushed a mixture of olive oil, Italian herbs, and garlic paste over it and then rolled it up and baked it as usual), which was quite popular, and a variety of cookies and candies leftover from last week. The only unfortunate thing is that I did not make the time to prepare a casserole, so now SS is over for the week and I am sitting in front of the fire with my feet up, but there is nothing in the oven baking until bubbly. I can hear The Southerner's stomach growling from the other room. Time to forage...

Have a great week!

The Crowd - part deux

So far so good...it was just a power surge. We're expecting high winds to go along with this wet snow, so you know...I better type fast.

The second part of this post, which you might be reading first because it will post after the one I just hurriedly posted, is about the bread. Last night, after fighting the broccoli into submission, I decided that for my own sanity, I better make the usual standard no-knead bread. I can whip it up in 5 minutes, so I made two loaves. Today, I was feeling better about the soup...you know, got some distance... and so I doctored up the loaves to make them more exciting. I kneaded (despite the no-knead name) garlic relish, cheese, and green onions into one loaf. The other loaf I sort of flattened out into a square and then broke bits of dark chocolate with hazelnuts over it and then I rolled it up and tucked it under itself. Pain au chocolat. Yeah...both breads were pretty popular!

As usual The Fleece Lady could not come without bringing something wonderful (yay Fleece Lady) and she brought a fabulous red pepper dip that I have to learn to make! Yummm...

Oh, and one last bit of news...no, not that it's snowing...ahhh power surge! Quick! The news is that Sunday Soup is going on the road on Jan. 18th. More info later! Have a great week!

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.

Happy New Year!

We hope that 2009 brings you much joy, peace, and soup.

With love, from me and The Southerner.

Sunday Songs

Today The Musician (okay, I just decided to call Nathan the musician even though there are many other musicians because he doesn't have a nickname and the rest do) and The Irish One played Christmas carols on guitars for the early arrivals. It was really lovely. The Southerner, who was in dire need of either a nap or coffee (settled for coffee since he really doesn't think he can get away with a nap during SS...not that he's not willing to try!), reclined on the couch while they played, enjoying hearing someone else play for a change. It was a really nice beginning to a great SS.

I made a seed bread, which is basically a white bread with fennel, poppy, and sesame seeds with some other thing...I forget. Anyway, I subbed a few things and mine had fennel, poppy, hemp seed (probably illegal down South!), and sunflower seeds. The fennel seed was the prominent flavour and it was lovely. It went well with the roasted vegetable soup.

The soup was super easy...just roast a bunch of vegetables in olive oil, salt & pepper, then add to veggie stock, puree and season. The seasonings I used were celery salt, regular salt, and garlic paste with a hint of cayenne and some aleppo peppers. Yummm! Not spicy at all, but with a tiny kick.

We had a crowd...Us, The Irish One, The Musician, The Brits, The Neighbour, The Newcomer (hi Debbie) and Hawk Owl (she doesn't need a nickname because she's got such a cool real name).

Everyone's gone home now and it's time to move onto the entree...Mmmm...I can smell the pizza baking...it must be time for me to go. Oh, if you want to make the best ever pizza crust, sub 1/2 cup of cornmeal for 1/2 cup of the flour. You can make it very thin then and it will be super crispy. The Southerner doesn't like marinara, so we use bruschetta topping. If you're not having soup, I highly recommend homemade pizza. Or as in the case of The Southerner...soup, bread AND pizza with salad (plus brownies, tea, cookies...etc.). Yep...they're ready! See you next week.

Cabin Fever

I think that after 16 days of snow, I have a bit of cabin fever. I know I am suffering from it because The Southerner was helping me chop vegetables for the soup and I snapped at him. Granted, he was tossing carrots around the kitchen (missing his targets, by the way), but usually his antics make me laugh. Today was the warmest it's been in a long time and did I take advantage of that and go out for a walk? No...and The Poor Southerner had to pay for my laziness.

I guess that means I'll have to be extra nice to him...maybe make something really yummy for dinner.

One thing I've been doing while I've been snowed in is read a lot of cookbooks. I got some soup ones and some specifically vegetarian ones from the library and there is some good stuff in those books. I've started reading cookbooks like people read magazines (no, not in the bathroom! Ew!); browsing, flagging pages for follow-up, gazing at the pictures.

Here are a few that I like:
THE ULTIMATE SOUP
THE BIG BOOK OF VEGETARIAN
1001 DELICIOUS SOUPS AND STEWS
THE COMPLETE SOY COOKBOOK

Tomorrow's soup is based on one from 1001 Delicious S&S. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Sunday Soup Conference Call

The snow is deep. The fire is warm and the food is good, but again...the snow is deep. The only one to brave the snowbanks was The Neighbour. I guess technically SS goes for another 49 minutes, so someone else could show up.

About 5:30 we got a call from The Handyman to say their road hadn't been ploughed and they couldn't get out so The Fleece Lady (Handyman's wife... so nicknamed because she makes the best fleece socks ever) was making soup for the two of them in honour of Sunday Soup. The hilarious part was that The Handyman had called not to tell me they weren't coming, but to find out what the soup was and who was here. When I told him White Bean with Spinach and Sundried Tomatoes and he repeated it to The Fleece Lady, there were big sighs of disappointment in the background. Then they heard there was cornbread and they started wondering if maybe they could hike out to the main road and hitchhike the rest of the way. When the Handyman started asking what The Southerner and The Neighbour were talking about I put him on speaker phone so he could join in, which he did. He even sang us a jazzy rendition of Joy To The World. In the end, I had to promise to put away a bit of soup and cornbread for them both.

Someone on The Southerner's photo blog was asking for a good winter soup recipe, so here is the one I made today. It is an original recipe that just popped into my head yesterday when I was trying to think of a holiday coloured soup. All measurements are approximate.

2 cups small white beans*
water to cover
2-2 1/2 quarts of vegetable stock
1 package frozen leaf spinach
3/4 cup sliced sundried tomatoes in olive oil, drained
salt & pepper to taste
1 cup milk or plain Silk (soymilk)

Cover white beans with water and bring to a boil in a 5-6 quart heavy pan (do not salt or beans will get tough). After they've reached a boil, reduce heat and simmer until tender (2-3 hours).

In a separate pot, make vegetable stock (or used canned, but really, it's so much easier and practically free to make it out of vegetable scraps...). Add to beans about an hour into simmering them. Note: If you want your soup to be white, use water and skip the stock, but the stock adds a lot of flavour.

When beans are tender, remove about half of them to another bowl and puree the beans and stock. Add the beans back in along with the tomatoes, spinach and milk or Silk. Salt and pepper to taste. That's it!

*Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to pre-soak beans. If you cook them long enough, they get tender. I never bother anymore and it always works out fine.

Oh, wait! There were two other guests who dropped in too! But they just wanted apples.

P.S. Since we moved to Canada, I have tried to adopt Canadian spellings. The Southerner just called me on "plough" so I looked it up. Apparently you can use either here in Canada, but plow is used most often. However, this is a word I have ALWAYS spelled as plough and I didn't even realize a tonne of people spell it plow until a year or so ago. I guess it's all the British books I read. Doughnut is another word that I just realized that a lot of people spell donut. Dialogue is another (dialog...blah). So while I don't seem to know if I'm a Brit, American, or Canadian, as my father always says, "You know what I meant."

We have water!

Thanks to Ken, super-handyman and fabulous friend, we have water after all. No frozen pipes, just a tripped switch on the well pump. The Southerner braved the snow late last night and went under the house, following careful instructions from The Handyman, reset the pump and voila! Water. You're all now free to use our washroom when you get here after all.

See you this afternoon! It's worth the effort in spite of the weather. The soup is yummy, The Southerner made cornbread, and there might just be a treat or two for those brave enough to tramp through the snow!

Through rain, through sleet, through snow...SS continues!

It looks like we're expecting up to 20cm of snow overnight and all day tomorrow. Just a quick note to say that we will still be having Sunday Soup, so feel free to tramp on over. And if the power is out, we'll heat it on the woodstove. I am THRILLED the power is on again after a 17 hour outage, but it would've been kind of cool to actually make the soup on the woodstove this evening. The Neighbour says I just thought it would be fun to blog about and that's why I wanted to cook it there...maybe so! Stay warm everyone!

Oh, yeah...on the downside, our pipes are frozen and we don't have any water that we didn't haul back on foot from the store...okay, okay...we ran into Laura and she drove the backpacks full of gallons of water almost to our house while we walked back light hearted and fancy free...but we would've carried all that water and that's what counts. Anyway, due to the water situation, if you're coming to SS, listen to your mother and if you need to go, go before you leave the house!

Cozy Evening

This picture is my pot of fresh herbs that I use for Sunday Soup. Ummm...I guess I'll be using dried for a while now.

The Brits, The Irish One, The Neighbour (Carol), The hmmm...what should I call Nathan? The Musician? That could get confusing because of The Southerner being a musician, and The Irish One is too...Oh, well, maybe I'll think of something over the next week. Either way, we had a lovely and cozy SS with a roaring fire and lots of tea before dipping into the soup.

The Brits are our new friends Rachel and Oli (and actually, there are so many Brits here on the island, I probably can't call them that either as a regular nickname) from last week...the surprise guests who we thought read about us on the internet and then just showed up (see post from last week for a better explanation). Anyway, they brought my flashlight back so I let them in and let them have soup. I'm really glad they're part of the group because they're very nice and I'm trying not to let it bug me that they are younger than me and that means I'm no longer the youngest in the group! I can live with that. Truly. Especially since according to The Southerner I'm already Middle Aged so you know...being "young" is over for me anyway. He didn't tell me this when I turned forty, nope...he told me this whenI turned thirty-five!!! And yes, I still married him!

Anyway, we had a lovely time. We didn't have cornbread tonight after all because The Southerner had to go off to work (by work, I mean do a play) so he could earn money to put the tofu on the table this week. Apparently the roads are only slightly trecherous and the worst part is actually our driveway, which we navigated earlier (and I only gasped in fear twice when it seemed like we were going to turn over our our side....). We had left the truck at the very end, near the road and all he had to do tonight was walk down to it.

I'd been kind of hoping the power would go out so that I wouldn't have to make dinner tonight, but so far no luck (obviously since I'm posting this). There's still time though...If I can just put it off a little longer we might have to just eat more soup! Maybe if I just turn out all the lights and unplug the stove The Southerner will be faked out by the dark and the fire and a few candles. Probably even he would notice that all the neighbours had electricity!

Sunday Snow

They predicted 1-2 centimeters of snow. I don't know about everyone else, but we got about 17-20 centimeters! And wind is coming after it stops snowing...which means POWER OUTAGES for sure. Just a note to say, if you're reading this before the power goes out, SS is still on! We can heat the soup on the woodstove...the cornbread will have to take a "snowcheck" though if the power is out. Bundle on up, trudge on over!

Red Lentil...err...make that yellow

So I bought red lentils at the store today (they cost twice as much as brown..) to make Cream of Red Lentil Soup. Within minutes of cooking them up, they turned a lovely shade of yellow. Go figure. I am assuming that the red peppers in the soup are actually what give it the red colour that the recipe title suggests, but I'm not that excited by red peppers, so I only put one in (instead of 6!) and so Yellow Soup it is. It tastes delicious, by the way.

To keep the theme going, I think I'll ask The Southerner to make cornbread. When I mentioned that to Carol she said, "YES! Do you think he'll make me my own round if I bring my own pan over?" I don't know about that, but Carol, if you've been a good girl this year, maybe Santy will bring you cornbread in your stocking!

Too Funny!

So an odd thing happened. The Southerner came across a blog that one of our neighbours has up and they had linked to both The Southerner's photo blog and this one. It is an anonymous blog, so we don't know who runs it, but they refer to things right here on our street as being their neighbourhood too. What was odd was that they linked to Sunday Soup, but had a whole post on their site about The Southerner's upcoming gig and how they didn't know who he was, but had seen his posters all around the island. We've been speculating for two days now, wondering who could know about SS, but not know who The Southerner is since he's one of the hosts. We still haven't figured it out. Don't get me wrong, I love that they've linked to this and I hope more people read it and get inspired to try their own Sunday Soup, but we were suddenly a bit worried that we might have a bunch of strangers show up!

While I do hand out cards to friends and people we meet with the SS info, here on the blog, I don't really mention our names or our island (it's easy enough to figure out, but I don't make it blatantly obvious). So we started thinking...hmmm...if other people on the island find this blog through that one, does that mean many, many people might just start dropping in for soup? We figured that wasn't likely. And then....

At four o'clock today, I saw Grinder shoot across the porch in a panic. That can mean only one thing...strangers! I looked out the window and saw a young (and lovely) couple approaching. I said to The Southerner, "I hope you know them because I don't have a clue who they are!" But he didn't! We were both thinking, OMG...everyone saw the blog and now we're getting strangers. Personally, we were okay with welcoming two strangers, as long as we didn't get fifty, so I opened the door and the man asked, "Is this Sunday Soup?" Panic rose higher in me. They had seen the blog. I just knew it! And any second people would be streaming up the driveway! I stammered, "Ummm...yes..." Then they introduced themselves and came into the kitchen. We were such gracious hosts, saying things like, "Welcome" and "Come in. Take your coat off." all the time wondering who they were. Finally, the man said, "Carol said we could come."

Whew! Carol had invited them so they were not random readers of this blog who had figured out where we live, after all! We got a good laugh out of that when Carol arrived. The thing is, we're very excited about meeting new people, but you know, we can't feed the whole island, so we do have to limit it to friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends. Oh, and of course, the random hitchhiker. Just two weeks ago, Cheryl and Ken brought a lovely teenage girl who was traveling the world after finishing high school in Germany. When they found out she was visiting the island, they just brought her along to Sunday Soup! She was very sweet and seemed to have a good time, but I do wonder what she told her family back home. Hopefully she said the soup was good!

Speaking of good soup, I think this was one of the more successful ones, which was a relief after last week's fiasco. The Southerner did finally empty last week's mess into the compost bin after I told him that I needed my pot if he wanted any supper on Friday! Yes, Friday! It like ta kill him to dump out all that food, even if he wouldn't eat it himself! I don't like to waste food either, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses.

Anyway, we all had a nice time and the young couple is new to the island and lives nearby so we hope to see them again. The Southerner said, "I hope they come back next week." and I said, "They better. I gave them my flashlight to get home!" Hehe!

That's better...

This week I made minestrone. The main reason I've never made it before is because there are so many recipes, literally ten in one cookbook, that I just never knew which recipe to follow. In the end, I simply read four or five of them and then just made it up. The Southerner had two bowls already and says it's very good. He's hoping no one comes tomorrow now. Just kidding! There's lots and lots.

I have made soup in the past with pasta in it and it just never keeps very well. It's okay when you serve it, but the next day the pasta balloons to twice its size or melts into the stock and makes it all starchy and gross. So today I cooked up the elbow macaroni separately in vegetable stock (so it would have the same flavour as the soup) and then after I drained it, I buttered it well. I will serve it on the side...you know, add a scoop of macaroni to the soup when you dish up. This will be good for our friend who can't have gluten too. Now she can eat the soup without having to fish out the pasta.

I haven't the slightest idea what the bread will be tomorrow, but I think I'll do most of the house clean-up tonight so that I can make a yeast bread tomorrow without having much else to do. Having to both clean and concentrate on a yeast bread is too much stress. The Southerner is happy to eat the soup with hillbilly crackers (Saltines) but I do advertise Sunday Soup as "soup and bread" so I think I'll save crackers for an emergency.

Oh! Speaking of bread I just realized I have a bowl of dough waiting for me to turn out for the next rising and then bake. I probably should've done that about two hours ago, but luckily it's the no-knead bread and is very, very forgiving. In fact, except for the time I let it rise in a metal bowl, it has turned out well every single time. Just an FYI, never let bread rise in a metal bowl because it doesn't work right. Metal apparently can get too warm and then too cold and really mess with the yeast, which is what happened when I tried it. It baked up as a hard little ball of dough. I just came across that info by chance long after I'd made the failed bread.

Ohhhh...maybe I'll make breadsticks again. They go with minestrone and are super, super easy. And everyone LOVED them last time. Whew...they're so simple I can take the evening off after all and clean tomorrow.

I'll let you know how it goes! Have a great Sunday and eat some soup.