#news now: local cryptid chirps info the void

[sophrosyneadrift]

Thrilled to announce that today is MY BIRTHDAY 🥰🥰🎉🎉🎉🎉 and as a special gift I have received the loveliest wishes from my most beloved friends and family and ALSO my throat does not feel like it is being pierced by knives anymore, after four straight days of this fucking head cold.

Peace and love on planet earth 😌✌️🕊️🌎🌍🌏✨

(Also every year that goes by since 2016 that Donald Trump is NOT elected president on my birthday is the best present. Fucking bless. Thank u to the passage of time, the Gregorian calendar, and my fellow US citizens for once again not letting this happen. Once was MORE than enough.)

[sophrosyneadrift]

9 and 46? :)

Thank you for the questions 🥰

9. which do you prefer, hot coffee or cold coffee?

Ahahahahaha, sadly I cannot have coffee — it’s a serious migraine trigger 😭😭😭 I tried SO hard to keep it in my diet but it hates me so much!!! But when I DID drink coffee (and when I drink my gallons of tea every day) it’s almost always hot!

46. favorite holiday film?

Muppets Christmas Carol 4eva <33

(Unless we are talking Halloween as the closest major holiday, in which case I rewatch Clue every year at about this time, lol)

[sophrosyneadrift]

Soup’s Up

So...it’s been a LONG time since I’ve posted any of my own actual words on here, but I’ve been inspired by @bomberqueen17’s series on casseroles and my thinking is that, according to the season, I will try and manage one of my own about soup.

(Yes, yes, I understand that soups aren’t NEARLY as exotic as casseroles to the vast majority of people who don’t live in the parts of the world that eat casseroles, but as someone who DID grow up eating casserole on the regs they are both about as equally exotic. I.e. Not At All. And they’re both Cold Weather Foods and soups heat up the house when cooking too. So yeah.)

(Also independent of whatever else happens and whoever else reads this my current recipe collection is 1) in shambles and 2) soup-wise, largely dependent on a cookbook that’s disintegrating (Bakery Lane Soup Bowl my beloved) so this will, at the very least, serve as a good collection for my constantly ailing memory. Assuming this hellsite doesn’t croak forthwith. Whatever.)

SO, all that said...I think it’s best to start with a cheap, easy, and solid old standby: Tomato Soup.

This is a wonderful recipe because it’s not only incredibly fucking easy and fast in the world of soup, but ALSO requires at most three main ingredients sans spices and add-ins, and involves extremely little cleanup. This is the holy trifecta I look for when cooking, as I am 1) hypoglycemic, and thus short-tempered and often bewildered by recipes when hungry, 2) constantly forgetting things that are not staples at the grocery store, and 3) very much NOT into cleaning up after I’ve cooked, so the easier that process the more likely it is to happen.

But PLEASE get to the recipe, Kat, you say, and thus I will say you need these things: 

- some form of crushed tomatoes or sauce. I use canned crushed tomatoes usually. Whatever brand will work. You can use the type with garlic or other flavors thrown in. You can even use canned chopped tomatoes instead, if a chunkier tomato experience is what you like! I am not a picky cook. I AM fond of expediency.

- some sort of cream. Heavy or light or half & half is fine. I usually have half & half on hand so that’s what I use. 

- some sort of stock, or stock-forming substance with an appropriate amount of water. Beef or chicken or veggie will work. Bouillon cubes will work. Boxed broth will work. From scratch will work. My preference is Better Than Bouillon, chicken flavor, which is a paste type of thing you add to water. Knock yourself out. 

- flavorful add ins. You can be as fancy or simple as you want here. I, personally, enjoy just salt and black pepper to taste, with a good few shakes each of dried basil and oregano, and a couple of shakes of red pepper. Sometimes I add garlic powder if I remember but usually I don’t.

Now, for directions:

Take your tomatoes and put them in a pot. I’m not going to give you an amount that will work for you if you’re only cooking for one or two people, because I have only ever cooked this for minimum 4 hungry people, usually more. So I take a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes and whack it in an appropriately-sized pot. 

Add broth or water&bouillon combo until the tomatoes are about as watered down as you want them. This depends on what kind of tomatoes you’re using. If you’re using crushed tomatoes you’ll usually need about half as much broth as there are tomatoes (14 oz for a usual batch for me, so...a little less than 2 cups). If you’re using chopped tomatoes you’ll have to cook them down a bit & add a little less broth or equivalent. If you’re using proper tomato sauce (like a can of Bertolli’s) you’ll need to add a little more broth...like a little less than half a cup, maybe?? Idk. Depends on how you like your tomato soup. I like mine more tomato-ey. I also add more bouillon to my water than the package says to, because they can’t tell me what to do.

Heat this up on a little less than medium heat until it’s JUST barely at a boil. Keep an eye on it. Stir occasionally. Tomatoes are a bitch and a half to burn. 

When it’s heated, turn it down about two notches (!!) and add your cream. You want a good pour, that gets the color to about the point where it looks like Tomato Soup you may have had from a can at some point in your life. I never measure this part, but for my large recipe purposes I would use probably about...a quarter cup?? Maybe a little more?? Idk. If you like it creamier put more. Put your spices in too, at this point!

Keep this on the lower heat setting (and continue keeping an eye on it and stirring occasionally) until it’s thoroughly warmed through. Do NOT boil it; dairy is fragile. I usually stick my finger in to see if it’s warm enough, but I have a lot of heat tolerance and very few nerves left in my hands and can’t recommend you try this at home.

Once it’s warmed through, turn the heat ALL the way down to low and let it sit for about five minutes to let the flavors mingle even more. You can take this time to contemplate why it’s so fucking cold outside, or why the fuck you waited so long to eat something. You can also take this minute to make a grilled cheese to eat with your soup. I usually do a mix of those three options.

(My preferred quick grilled cheese is an everything bagel with pepper jack and ham, thrown in the toaster oven with the two halves open until the cheese melts and then taken out and squished together. I am a man of simple tastes.)

And finally: Eat!!! I recommend eating the whole thing. This soup was not necessarily made for leftovers, sadly (its only real weakness), although you CAN reheat it in a pinch.

And that’s all she wrote. I hope you enjoyed this! If not then please take appropriate measures, as I will probably be posting about soup intermittently for the foreseeable future. Please fasten your seatbelts for the rest of the soup journey. 

[sophrosyneadrift]

SOUP TIME, Party Edition: Minestrone

Monday is my birthday (!!!!!), and as such I thought it would be excellent to post PARTY SOUP. This, of course, means soup that makes enough for a party--not that most of us are doing very much partying, at this juncture, unfortunately. But one can dream of a future time when such a thing might be more advisable.

Minestrone is one of those extremely versatile soups that everybody makes slightly differently. This particular recipe, from the Bakery Lane Soup Bowl cookbook, is one I am VERY fond of, and can only make when feeding a crowd. Even halving it produces more minestrone than one can feasibly eat in a week--even myself, battle-hardened leftovers-for-lunch veteran that I am--and unfortunately it doesn’t freeze very well. Once, memorably, one large-ish batch of this soup and a loaf of bread fed four hungry college students for a week straight.

Alas, I will stop reminiscing. Recipe for minestrone under the cut. Warning: it’s a long one. Party soup involves Many Ingredients.

- 1/2 pound (8 oz) great northern beans. You can use canned or dry. If you’re using dry keep in mind that you’ll need to 1) soak them overnight and then 2) cook them just covered in FRESH water until they’re tender. I just use canned, because that’s a lot of mind load for a soup that also includes so many other ingredients.

- 1/4 cup olive oil. You can sub butter for this

- 1/4 cup butter (half a stick, in the US). You can sub olive oil for this. 

- 1 1/4 cups chopped carrots (I recommend chopping baby carrots. One of the half-sized packages will give you enough for this. You can also use regular-sized carrots but they require peeling, and...again, a lot of mind load)

- 2 1/2 cups chopped celery. This will be the equivalent of 4-5 stalks. WASH YOUR CELERY WELL, MY CHILDREN. 

- 1 1/12 cups chopped onion (1 large onion should work for this. Again, watch out for onions at this point in time. You’re going to be cooking the shit out of these but there’s no use tempting fate.)

(At this juncture, may I make a suggestion?? If you have a food processor or a blender, this is its time to shine. Cut your baby carrots in half, cut your celery into 2-3 inch sections, and quarter your onions. Throw them all into your chopper of choice. Pulse until they’re as small as you like. Et voila.)

- 3-4 cloves garlic, crushed or chopped very finely

- 16 oz can chopped tomatoes

- 4 quarts beef/chicken/veggie stock, or equivalent water&bouillon combo of your choice

- 2 cups diced potatoes. This is usually about 2 large potatoes.

- 1 1/2 tbsp salt

- 1/4 cup roughly-chopped parsley, or 2 tbsp dried parsley

1 tbsp dried basil leaves

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 pound diced cooked ham. You can use deli ham, which often comes in a handy dandy pre-apportioned container, or honestly any other ham you like. You could also use chicken or turkey in this, although if you do this you’ll probs want to add another 1/2 tsp or so of salt at the end. You can also use a 1/4 pound prosciutto if you’re feeling Decadent. 

- 1 pound frozen green beans (or, like, fresh!!! I make this in fall & winter when there’s No Fresh Produce so frozen it is.)

- 1 pound zucchini or other summer squash (or eggplant), diced

- 1/2 cup dried elbow macaroni. The original recipe specifies macaroni, but you could use any type of sufficiently small noodles. Wheels would be SUPER fun in this.

- 2 cups shredded cabbage (coleslaw mix is *chef’s kiss* for this)

- Black pepper to taste

Grated parmesan cheese, for garnish

Heat your fat/oil combo in a medium saucepan over medium heat until it’s JUST hot enough to not want to hold your hand near. Add all your veggies & cook until the onions are translucent. Add garlic and toss around a little until it’s toasty. 

Add tomatoes and bring to a boil. Simmer 10 min.

In a BIG soup pot (I once used a lobster pot for this and it filled it 1/3 of the way full) combine stock and potatoes over high heat. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat to medium and simmer until potatoes are just tender. 

Add your simmering vegetables, beans, seasonings, ham, and green beans. Bring to a boil and simmer 20 minutes.

Add zucchini, macaroni, cabbage, and pepper. Simmer another 15 minutes.

Serve garnished with grated parmesan cheese. You can also eat this with grilled cheese, if you like, or put croutons in your bowl or dip crusty bread into it. Or just eat it plain. It is a VERY substantial meal on its own so no need to worry about getting extra food groups in there. 

Makes 24-ish cups of soup. PARTY TIME. 

[sophrosyneadrift]

Soup Season: Beef and Barley

This month has been A Time. Between several family health emergencies, the time change, and my period arriving with a vengeance a week early, it’s time to bring out the big guns, comfort-food wise: The Beef Stews.

Now, I am as big a fan of Ye Olde Traditional Beef Stew as any meat eater with anemia and taste buds. BUT there are actually a couple of versions of beef stew that I feel are VASTLY underappreciated within the soup canon, and those two will receive prime placement in the next few days.

First up is Beef and Barley Soup. Recipe below the cut:

To make this excellent and very hearty soup/stew, you will need:

- a cut of beef that isn’t too expensive, is suitable for making beef broth, and has enough meat on it to stock your soup to your satisfaction. When I went shopping last week I bought a 7-bone chuck roast because it was the cheapest option available with the bone in. You could also use beef shanks, which I would have preferred but they didn’t have those at Market Basket.

(You could also just use stew meat and beef bouillon if you’re short for time and/or it’s cheaper and/or…any reason, really. This is all about Solutions That Work Best For You.)

- spices to cook your meat/broth with. Last week I used onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, and a bay leaf.

- barley. You can use quick barley or the long-cooking kind. The long-cooking kind will have more nutrients but the quick kind will be done faster. The long-cooking kind will also state on the package that you should rinse it beforehand but I have literally never done this. It’s your call!

- vegetables. For last week’s purposes I used a bag of frozen mixed veggies from Market Basker, which included green beans, peas, carrots, corn, and lima beans (my beloved) because I wanted efficiency, as usual. But honestly you could use whatever. Root vegetables are good in this. Hearty greens and/ cabbage would be good in this.

- salt and pepper to taste

This is a good opportunity to utilize a crock pot for all it’s worth, but you can also use a regular old soup pot. If you��re using an entire 7-bone chuck roast you’re going to want to use something Big, and you’re also probably going to have leftover meat.

Anyway: put your meat in a crockpot/other soup pot of your choice and fill 3/4 of the way with water. Put your spices of choice in. For a crock pot, turn it on low. For a soup pot, bring the water to a boil, then turn down to medium-low to simmer. You can put a cover on askew to stop the liquid from evaporating as fast.

Cook until meat is falling off the bone. Check occasionally to make sure there’s still enough liquid, if you’re cooking on the stove.

Fish your pieces of meat (and your bay leaf, if you’re using one) out of your broth. Pick apart the meat from the bones and super fatty parts. It will be really fucking hot, so be careful.

While you’re picking apart the meat, start cooking the barley. Add about a cup of barley of your choice to the hot broth. Turn the heat up to high, if you’re cooking on the stovetop, and then to medium and simmer. OR you can turn the crock pot up to high.

You can also start cooking your veggies. If you’re using frozen ones: steam in the microwave or on the stove according to package instructions, then drain and add to the broth. If you’re using root vegetables: add to the boiling broth before you add the barley. If you’re using greens: add to the simmering broth with the meat.

Add as much meat as you want back to the broth. Season with salt and pepper to taste, as well as any of the earlier spices you used that you feel aren’t showing up enough.

Keep cooking until the barley becomes tender and unfurls a bit, the root vegetables and/or cabbage, if you’re using them, are tender, and all of your flavors have mingled. This may take up to half an hour or more, depending on how much you’ve put in there, and whether you’re using regular barley or not.

Eat and be merry and not anemic. Don’t burn your mouth.

(My heavy recommendation for this is to eat it with bread, but technically it really doesn’t need anything else to be a meal. Last week I made cottage dill bread and ate it with that, because I was going for the Full Comfort Food experience. Ymmv.)

The leftover meat you can just eat sometime during the rest of the week…OR…you can use to make borscht the next weekend, as I did. Stay tuned.

[sophrosyneadrift]

Soup Season: Hamstravaganza + Happy New Year

Listen. Listen!

Many of you who eat pork, and who specifically eat pork during the holidays, may already be hammed out. You may be horrified at the idea of eating any more smoked-and-salted food. You may be sickened at the sheer IDEA of consuming anything you’ve already eaten in bulk for the past month or so. 

This post is not for you. This post is for the people who go out on Jan 1 or 2 and buy a ham, because ham is now on sale for $2 or less a pound and a single pre-cooked, spiral-sliced ham can feed a single person for approximately a zillion meals, or four people for approximately five. 

(This is a life hack, by the way. If you have a big enough freezer you can throw the ham you buy wholesale into a freezer and not need to look at until later in the winter. Or, like. Next fall. OR if your freezer isn’t big enough you can cook the ham, separate the meat and the hocks into freezer bags, and freeze those. You can also do this with turkey.)

In celebration of surviving 2021, let’s make some pea soup: specifically, something that looks a lot like Marge Warder’s Pea Soup, from the Bakery Lane Soup Bowl cookbook. 

Now, for the sake of my short attention span, I’m going to assume that you’ve already cooked your ham and cut all the meat you wanted for other purposes off it, leaving you with only a ham bone (or “hock”) and the pickings. I’ve also found that this recipe works best for unglazed hams, although it certainly isn’t terrible with a little glaze in there as well. This said, for this recipe you will need:

- 3 pound smoked ham hock (at least -- yours will probably be bigger. This is fine and you probably won’t have to double the recipe as this already makes QUITE a bit.)

- 3 1/2 quarts water (or enough to cover quite a bit of your ham hock in an appropriately-sized pan)

- 1 pound green split peas

- 1 1/4 cups chopped onion OR 1/4 cup dried chopped onion. I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not fond of actual onion in this recipe so I use the dried stuff. 

- 1 1/4 cups chopped carrot

- 1-3 medium potatoes, washed and chopped (the amount of potato you need will depend on what your broth looks like. If you’re the type of person who preps ingredients before you start cooking, gods love you, I’d just cut up two and have done with it.)

- 1 1/2 cups diced ham (unless your ham bone is LITERALLY picked dry, don’t worry about this one when assembling your other ingredients -- you’ll cut this from the hocks after you boil them)

- salt & pepper to taste (although you probs won’t want much salt)

Put your ham hocks in the appropriate amount of water in an appropriately-sized pot. Bring to a boil on high heat, reduce heat and simmer 2-3 hours. Remove ham hocks and set aside to cool.

Skim off excess fat from the ham stock. Add your split peas (you can wash them first if that process is important to you). Bring stock to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 2 hours. Add chopped onion, carrot, and potato (add one potato and then look at your stock! Does it look like it could use more potato? Then add more potato. Continue until you’re happy), bring back to a boil, then reduce heat again and simmer an additional 30 mins.

While your soup is simmering, remove the remaining meat from your ham hocks. You do NOT want too much fat or “skin,” so make sure your pile of meat doesn’t include much of those. Dice your meat--as much as you like, recipe specifications be damned--and add to your stock, along with salt and pepper to taste. 

Heat to serving temperature and serve warm. This is wonderful with rolls...or toast...or croutons. You survived 2021, after all. Go ham with it. 

[sophrosyneadrift]

Soup’s Up, Part Four: Broccoli Cheese

You will notice that I haven’t technically labeled today’s recipe a “soup.” This is because I have reservations about calling it such. NOT because I don’t think it’s really food—bc it most CERTAINLY is—but because, to me, soup sounds like it should involve some kind of liquid. Broth…water…cream…something.

This recipe involves none of that. It’s more of a dip, actually. It DOES, however, involve a lot of fat, some protein, AND a vegetable, all suspended in a viscous substance, and thus sort of qualifies and is actually much more substantial than many soups. Thus I will include it here.

It is also the easiest & quickest goddamn thing to make, which is important because the past two weeks have been A Seasonally Depressed Time. Recipe for broccoli cheese…something…below.

- about a pound of broccoli. Fresh, frozen, whatever.

- 16 oz block velveeta cheese, cut into 1/2 in slices

- pepper to taste. You could also put other spices in, but as you will see in a moment this isn’t exactly Highbrow Food and usually I’m making it to simply get as many calories into my body as I can as fast as possible so like. Just pepper works fine for me.

- round loaf of bread, if you want to make a bread bowl out of this (highly recommended)

Put about one finger joint’s depth of water in a pot and bring to boil. Once boiling, put your broccoli in—you can use a steamer basket if you have one. I don’t. Turn heat down to medium. Let steam 3-4 minutes for frozen, 5-6 min for fresh, or until tender. Then uncover (look out from the steam! I have burnt myself doing this) and remove from heat.

(You can also just steam the broccoli in the microwave if you have the frozen kind in the steamable bag. There should be directions on the back. This is GREAT but sometimes I don’t have it, and also knowing how to steam vegetables the hard way is like an important life skill. I guess.)

Pour out whatever’s left of your water. You can use a strainer basket for this, OR you can put the lid back on the pot and kind of crack it just enough that the water will pour out, but not any of the broccoli. Don’t burn yourself.

Put your pan back on the heat. Turn down to medium low. Stir your broccoli a bit, and throw in your velveeta chunks. Let them melt, babysitting a little. DO NOT BURN THE VELVEETA BURNT VELVEETA IS TERRIBLE.

While the cheese is melting, if you’re making a bread bowl out of this, rip out the center of your round loaf to make a bowl. Rip up the center you just took out to make smaller chunks of bread and arrange around the “bowl” to your liking.

Once your cheese is melted in, add your pepper and give it all a STIR. Don’t be afraid to get a little rough. The broccoli tastes better when it’s in smaller pieces. Make sure it’s all heated through—cold velveeta is the WORST—then pour into your bread bowl.

If not eating out of a bread bowl, I still recommend eating with bread, or something else to break in on the cheesiness a bit. Eating it straight feels INCREDIBLY indulgent.

Feeds two to three hungry people. Only fill the bread bowl with however much you feel like you’ll eat in one sitting. If you have leftovers I HIGHLY recommend heating them back up on low heat on the stove—microwaving this makes it Sad.