Money For Soup
Jun. 26th, 2011 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
passionpop One of the best things about winter is having the excuse to eat soup. One has the opportunity to learn how to make butternut pumpkin soup. The warmth of the stove is a great reason to boil bones down to stock and the hollowed out bones are great as straws for your soup. One may even go so far as to buy a bread maker to make fresh bread to have with the soup, but that’s too much effort really . All I want is good soup.
Soup is not always that great though. In my childhood my family went to Europe via the U.S.S.R. Those were the bad old days of Russia and the soup wasn’t that good either. I remember walking into the restaurant of the government run hotel we were at, the restaurant could have doubled as a function room, it was that big, but on this day, there was my family and one other couple in the restaurant.
We sat down were provided with soup, I assume it was intended to be soup. It appeared more like warm tap water with chopped parsley and a whole boiled egg sitting in the middle of it.
I stared at this soup, wondering what to do with it. I was about 98% sure we were not meant to eat it. I was 10 and I remember thinking that this must be table garnish or something. I looked at the other couple and they appeared to be eating it. I looked around the room and I didn’t see any staff so I couldn’t tell if they were snickering at the other couple behind a door somewhere. In the end, I decided to skip the soup and wait for the main course. I cant remember what it was, but I am sure wasn’t that dire.
That soup wasn’t all bad though, at least the egg was shelled, and it is not the worst soup I have had the misfortune of being served, That award goes to something more recent.
The other week I purchased what was advertised as chicken and vegetable soup from the café at work. It was taken out of a fridge and microwaved and I went back to my desk to consume it. Before I took a bite, I scooped it through. There was no chicken, not one single bit, and the soup was not warm.
I nuked the soup a bit more than I got through one slurp. The vegetables we close to raw and the fluid was little more than milk. It may have actually been watered down cream in the what was later defined as creamy vegetable soup and not the soup I purchased. The best thing about the soup was that I got a refund.
So in the end, winter is about home made soup. Not the stuff sold as “homemade’, but real soup cooked on a real stove in a real home, my home, just preferably not by me. Who’s making me soup?
Soup is not always that great though. In my childhood my family went to Europe via the U.S.S.R. Those were the bad old days of Russia and the soup wasn’t that good either. I remember walking into the restaurant of the government run hotel we were at, the restaurant could have doubled as a function room, it was that big, but on this day, there was my family and one other couple in the restaurant.
We sat down were provided with soup, I assume it was intended to be soup. It appeared more like warm tap water with chopped parsley and a whole boiled egg sitting in the middle of it.
I stared at this soup, wondering what to do with it. I was about 98% sure we were not meant to eat it. I was 10 and I remember thinking that this must be table garnish or something. I looked at the other couple and they appeared to be eating it. I looked around the room and I didn’t see any staff so I couldn’t tell if they were snickering at the other couple behind a door somewhere. In the end, I decided to skip the soup and wait for the main course. I cant remember what it was, but I am sure wasn’t that dire.
That soup wasn’t all bad though, at least the egg was shelled, and it is not the worst soup I have had the misfortune of being served, That award goes to something more recent.
The other week I purchased what was advertised as chicken and vegetable soup from the café at work. It was taken out of a fridge and microwaved and I went back to my desk to consume it. Before I took a bite, I scooped it through. There was no chicken, not one single bit, and the soup was not warm.
I nuked the soup a bit more than I got through one slurp. The vegetables we close to raw and the fluid was little more than milk. It may have actually been watered down cream in the what was later defined as creamy vegetable soup and not the soup I purchased. The best thing about the soup was that I got a refund.
So in the end, winter is about home made soup. Not the stuff sold as “homemade’, but real soup cooked on a real stove in a real home, my home, just preferably not by me. Who’s making me soup?