Call me Popeye...

Ok, I know I'm going to lose some of you on this one, but I love Spinach. Always have done. In bad IBS years it was not so easy for me to tolerate but I'm doing better with all that these days.

Even as a child, when my Mom would take me to the Hot Shoppes Cafeteria at Tyson's or Landover (a long gone chain for you young folk) I always asked if I could just get mashed potatoes with gravy and steamed spinach. She'd raise her eyebrows at my choices but she let me and I was in hog heaven. I'd usually get one of their scrummy white cloverleaf dinner rolls as well. What REAL foods did you love years ago that you may have left in the dust of memory? Can you try to rekindle what it is you liked about it in order to make something like that as a gift to yourself and your family now?

As an adult I discovered how yummy creamed spinach is and there was a brand I can't recall, that used to make quite good frozen creamed spinach. Seabrook? something like that. I think Birdseye made a similar thing. A couple years ago when Glenn and I went out to dinner at the Cottonwood Grille, I had a lovely cream of spinach soup there. With this in mind I went off to foodgawker and hunted away. I settled on a recipe by Mark Bittman from the New York times. Made as it was, I found it a bit thin, so I made a roux with butter and flour and added this, which made it more like I had in mind. To be fair, it's probably not an issue with the original recipe,I may have accidentally had thinner soup due to having to halve his recipe. Anyway it's good to know if you want it thicker you can make it so. I also might try it with some Parmesan cheese added.



This one is a keeper! And it made a great companion to the Bagel chips.
(Take two bagels, slice across so you are left with circles, sprinkle up to 1/4 cup of oil-I used olive and if you like sprinkle them with some garlic salt. Bake on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan at 300 until lightly brown, check every 5 mins so they don't burn, this made enough for soup and a snack the next day.)

No. 1 Carrot Soup attempt.

Well, it started out looking ok. Here I am playing Jenga with carrots. Who needs real toys?

The recipe calls for baby carrots from the store. I recently found out that baby carrots are just adult carrots cut by a machine into uniform shapes and I am not going to pay extra to have them lie to me (-: I cut my own carrots thank you very much, and I didn't ask them how old they were. They are organic at least.

The recipe also calls for two to three cans of chicken broth (easily subbed with veggie broth for the vegetarians amongst us) Well silly me, who is still unwell and has no business operating sharp, hot, heavy or electronic machinery much less my brain, grabbed two Swanson cans off the shelf, noting to self I need to stock up on the pacific organic at Costco, and proceeded to pour right on in. To my horror one of them wasn't chicken but beef. Call me OCD but I don't like to mix my food/meat families. The Chinese make Happy family and the Cajuns make Jambalaya but seriously, I think it's something that might have been addressed in Leviticus, I've just not found it yet!!!

Oh and it DOES get worse my friends... at some point during the process of boiling said carrots in aforementioned perverse liquid, I went to lift the lid to check for doneness again and somehow, low and behold there was a paper towel boiling happily in the surface. Alls (sic) I can figure is that the hot steamy lid I set to the left of the stove somehow was set on a paper towel which clung surreptitiously to the inside of the lid and then fell in the pot. There was nothing in the recipe about adding a paper towel! And I don't think my mind is that lost yet. Now what to do. What was on said paper towel before it's immersion? It was likely the paper towel that Glenn uses over by the coffee grinder to wipe up grinds, but that he fails to throw away cause it still has some good wipes in it. (and it might make a tasty fiber addition to dinner?) Do I toss the whole effort, now done and ready to puree? I get on the phone to ask hubby what exactly the history of said towel is, he's in a pastoral meeting but I just can't go on without some type of towel provenance. He affirms that yes that's his coffee grinds towel, like that makes everything all better. I've had friends who have confessed to washing steaks that fell on the floor, so how bad could this be? It was boiled? Grant it the towel wasn't very attractive as it came out the saffrony color of curry, but I shall try to wipe this image from my mind if I decide to eat it. (The soup, not the towel.)

On a side note, I have spices in my Indian spice tin that I have failed to label. I am not sure if I have 1/4 tsp of cayenne or of chili powder in this soup. It also has 1.5 tablespoons of curry in it. See the big bottle of milk there? Well that is out because after tasting said powders with my finger on my tongue, I couldn't tell you what was what (I thought maybe I'd some how instinctually know which was which) what I can say it my tongue is still recovering.

Well, the soup is finished and I will tell you that if you are going to make a soup, regardless of the notoriety of the chef online, don't do as I do and just follow it without reading the comments. 9 out of 10 posters liked or loves this soup, but most all of them said too SPICY!!!! duh, there was part of me that did question 1.5 tablespoons of curry powder. So I have now added a scoop of brown sugar and I think as per the comments now read, I will add about a cup of half and half or cream to "cool it down" a bit. My missionary friend Laura (who I don't know in real life but like lots online!) told me she got a carrot soup in South Africa that was served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the center. I think that sounds just like what this soup needs!

So for now, as I hold a tissue to my dripping nose (from the SPICE) I can recommend this soup for it's ease IF you have an immersion blender, and with some changes. Do not spice it as it calls for, start with half and work up, you can always add more spice to taste after pureeing. I also recommend you check your can labels before you add anything, and check under your pot lid each time you pick it up, you never know what might be hiding there.