When your refrigerator gets to the point where you can't open it without the orange juice falling on you and your grandson, it is time to make soup.Gather all of the leftovers. Search diligently in all of the corners and drawers for the containers of foods you have cooked and not finished and saved for the last week.
They may include many various and diverse items, depending on your menu for the week.
Such as:
Red cabbage, onions, apples, golden raisins, dried cherries and caraway seeds. With a tiny bit of bacon.
Venison cooked with the above.
Rotisserie chicken from the Publix Deli.
Green beans, carrots, and heirloom small potatoes.
Organic salad greens which have just gone one step too far in age to be presented as salad.
Quinoa.
Fill your large, favorite pot with water halfway up. Add a packet of Knorr vegetable soup mix.
Cut up the potatoes and carrots into bite-sized pieces. Add those.
Add the red cabbage, etc.
Cut up the venison and also the chicken, giving all the skin and tendons and other parts you don't want to your old, old boxer dog who is standing there with hungry eyes, waiting for such treats.
Throw in the mixed salad greens. Don't bother to cut them, they will wilt to small size. Let it come to a simmer.
Taste. Consider.
Soy sauce? Salt? Some tiny frozen peas that need to be eaten soon and I am not kidding?
Oh yes.
A bit of smoked paprika? Pepper?
Uh-huh.
Wait! There's a small container of salad in the refrigerator. You know there is. It was made with greens, of course, and tomatoes and basil and pickled carrots and cauliflower and grilled asparagus in olive oil. Toss that in too. You'd forgotten the mozzarella cheese in there. Oh well.Taste again.
Oh yes.
Put the lid on and let it simmer for awhile. Join the dogs in licking your lips as the smell fills the house. Resist the idea of gettin' jiggy wid it. Don't add no cumin seed. Don't add no shallots. If you have some red wine, I suppose that would be okay. Take the ingredients you have as an ordained situation.
Consider making some oat bran muffins with carrots and apples and cinnamon as you go out to shut the chickens up in the hen house. Think to yourself how nicely this would tie it all together into a meal.
Think about how some people are feeling all gourmet tonight because they went to Boston Market instead of McDonald's.
Feel sorry for them.
Bake your muffins. Make sure to include walnuts.
Wonder what you would call this soup, if someone held a gun to your head (oh, please, NO!).
Decide on Hunter/Gatherer Love Soup.
Serve with butter and local honey.
To yourself.
Tomorrow, when your husband is back in town, serve the same meal to him. Kiss him and thank him for the deer meat.
Bow your head to the joyful task of eating.
Amen.
