Soup's on!

I spent an hour destroying my kitchen this morning. It’s an hour spent this morning that I don’t have to spend tonight making dinner. It’s an hour that will be totally worth it when I just decide it’s time for dinner and I ladle soup into bowls and pull the baguette that comes with a big flaming orange “just bake it” sticker out of the oven. (I’m submitting that for run-on sentence of the year.)

I made my grandma’s vegetable beef soup. When we first got married, I was determined to make the soup and collected recipes from anyone willing to give me one because my grandma doesn’t use a recipe. There’s no written history of her soup. After many, many failed attempts I finally figured it out last winter and I’ve made it 100 times since.

The kids love it and call it “Nana’s soup.” I told Meredith last night that I was going to make Nana’s soup in the morning and we’d have it for dinner. She said, “You know what Mom? I think you should just start calling it “Leslie’s soup.” You’ve made it enough times, just go ahead and make it your own.” She’s four!

It’s a good soup day. It’s rainy and dreary and I’m not going to feel like roasting a chicken later. So we’ll have soup, crusty warm bread, cheese, and pickles. That’s what my grandma always serves with soup.

If you are interested in the recipe, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: 6685 Braemar…No, I’m kidding. I’ll e-mail it to you, but don’t you miss TV cooks saying that?!

When I started to make the soup this morning, I realized I forgot to buy a head of cabbage. Brandon is home this week, so I put Alex on the bus and went to Kroger at 8:00 a.m. alone! I was literally one of two shoppers in the store. There were plenty of stock boys running around, but it was just me and one other yoga pant clad mother.

As I walked in, I spotted some interestingly shaped pumpkins. They were the kind that are sort of squatty and bright orange. They were 3/$12 so I bought one. I have three pumpkins on our porch and the asymmetry was bothering me.

Because the store was empty, the cashier was bored. I gave her the sticker off the pumpkin and she decided she needed to call the produce department because it was not a carving pumpkin. Aside from the fact that I handed her the pumpkin’s bar coded sticker and it was the same exact price as the other pumpkins.

I said, “It’s $4. I’ll save you a call.” She said, “Yeah, but I don’t know what it is. I need to call back.” I said, “It’s a pumpkin and it’s $4. I even double checked to make sure I didn’t have to buy 3.” She rolled her eyes and said, “Well, what’s it called, like an ‘ugly pumpkin’ or something?” I rolled my eyes and punched her in the mouth. No. I didn’t, but I wanted to.

I hauled the pumpkin to the porch and hoped Brandon wasn’t in his office where he could see what I was up to. He loves when I drag home pumpkins that will rot on our porch by the end of the month. He loves them almost as much as the giant mums I made him drag home from Costco.