Living Well

Yesterday's dinner (see photo) was a nice Spanish entree from Bon Appetit!  We decided we were likely the only folks in Foxboro feasting on this particular dish.  Tonight was Mexican with a new recipe for tortilla soup.  I have maybe half a dozen recipes,  but had never made this particular one.  Mega yum. 

Last night I dreamed my old high school friend showed up in the Berkshires at another friend's house.  She said, "I brought some cookies."  I tasted one, and it was great.  I tasted it again.  It contained bacon.  Meanwhile, the hostess, eschewing all cookies was parading around showing off  her recent weight loss.  What did this dream mean?

The tortilla soup  makes enough for three meals if we practice portion control.   Here is the photo of the grilled sausage and shrimp kebabs with tomato and onion.  It's served and basted with a spicy sauce of olive oil, garlic, red pepper and pimenton.  Ole!  

The other photo is a view of the deck with the newly planted box of red petunias and the red flowers (begonias)  in colorful pots.  It is so restful to sit and read and drink (soft and/or hard) looking out over the slough. 

The Rains Came

Is anyone building an ark?  We in the Boston area are deluged with rain.  And more rain.  Not gentle spring rain but as we used to say out west, gully washers.  It is the monsoon season.  Whatchagonna do?  Still have to run errands and go grocery shopping.  For some reason I do not have a hooded waterproof windbreaker or any practical rain garment, so I just run in and out, getting wetter and wetter.  Today I forgot my baseball cap,  and really was drenched.

Of course, cold damp  weather calls for soup.  This week I made an interesting tortilla soup, pureed and thickened with (!) tortillas.   I  flavored it with the usual suspects and also a big dry ancho chilli pepper.  We grilled the tomatoes, onions and tortillas.  On Monday, before the monsoons.  You have to get outside while you can.

The crocus are damp and drooping.    Alas, alas.  One ray of sun would bring out the forsythia.   Wonder how the new garlic likes this. 

The soup was vegetarian, but I roasted a chicken breast and we sprinkled pieces of that along with fried tortilla strips and sour cream into the soup.  

Tortilla Soup

Since we are trolling for recipes that say, "take 4 ripe tomatoes. . . . ." I thought of my old tortilla soup recipe which I have served to countless Europeans who have all thought it excellent.

I found a similiar recipe on the web, just change the canned tomatoes to 4 ripe tomatoes and you're in business. Don't cheat and skip the cilantro. We love all the toppings. We love sitting with a box of Kleenex on the table because I left part of the pith and seeds in the jalapeno.

Live bravely. Soup is good food.

The world's best torilla soup is at the Stanford Court Hotel (see Blog photo) in San Francisco, but it's big time cheaper to eat this recipe. On the other hand, the Stanford Court is a lovely spot to eat lunch, and if you have some ready cash or credit, why not treat yourself to a bowl of this heavenly soup?

Enjoy. http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/002087tortilla_soup.php

Tortilla Soup, Another Peasant Soup

We are on a soup binge. Yesterday Iwas carrying a load of paperwork downstairs, using the big laundry basket to transport everything, and I missed the last step and landed on my ankle. Ouch! Apparently nothing broken, but a bad sprain, so I am hobbling around.

Soup seemed easy enough, with 5 ripe tomatoes staring at me from the kitchen window, and a big can of chicken broth, onion and garlic of course, last weeks still pretty fresh cilantro, corn tortillas in the freezer, and a seen-better-days jalapeno in the fridge. That's all you need. We added sour cream and Mexican cheese and more freshly fried tortillas to eat with the soup. Make a big batch and we have it again tonight, with a salad to use some more of those tomatoes--four more on the window sill and a half dozen in the garden.

When they ripen, they ripen. I'm thinking tomato bread salad for the weekend and some fresh tomato soup. It's the last of the bountiful harvest. It's a long, long time until July when the garden bursts forth again.

Apropos the garden: all the geraniums need to be brought in, and after the first frost, the annuals pulled up. Or do I just do cuttings? Always kind of sad to see the beautiful colors go. I've had such a riot of reds, purples, yellows, orange, pink and every lovely hue all summer.

All my life, summer has been my favorite season, and it still is.

I'm entering the Amazon novel contest--just about ready with the entry, and all the adjutant stuff. Always a lot of work even if you have the novel ready, but is a novel ever ready? One more pass has revealed just a few things that need fixing. I'm sending off World of Mirrors, which has come close to selling a couple times, so maybe it will do well in the contest, although it's not an Oprah kind of novel or a thriller kind of novel. I hope it's a good story that keeps the reader involved. Can we ever ask for more of our books?

Reading Madame Proust and Tell No One. Kind of a schizoid list, even I admit. Finished On the Road. The Mexico stuff was pretty good, but I got so friggin' tired of Dean Moriarty and his women and his disloyalty and his childishness. It's interesting how books affect you depending on your age at reading. Has anyone ever written about this? Good essay topic, but not for today.

Meanwhile, back to World of Mirrors and the manuscript tweaks.

Grapeshot