Tag: #Dinner

  • ODDS and ENDS: My Head Hurts, (Place Holder), and SOUP!

    (Revved up like a deuce…)

    I didn’t sleep well last night, so I know that’s the main reason, but man, my head hurts. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being barely there and 10 being the worst pain imaginable, I would say I am at a 2. But the pain in behind my left eye, going up the left side of my head and ending at the back of my skull. Usually, when I get pain behind an eye, that is the red flag of a migraine. But like I said, the pain is low and that leads me to believe that this will become a dreaded migraine. In fact, it’s been years since I had one. I used to get migraines a handful of times a year, while normal headaches would happen at least once a week. You might find this hard to believe, but this would happen to me back when I was working a normal 9 to 5 job. I think it had everything to do with stress, and now I don’t live as stressful of a life, but there are still stresses.

    (Place Holder for a good idea)

    You know who loves soup? Me and my wife. You know who hates soup? My kid. You know who is willing to try any food you put in front of them, except soup? That is also my kid. I find this so confusing about her. I’ve asked her often, what is it about soup that you hate? And she just says, I don’t like soup? But she likes ramen. She loves when we make a Japanese hotpot at home. She loves getting pho. But soup. Even a normal basic chicken noodle soup, she hates. And this hatred for soup has been growing. The kid won’t touch a stew, or gumbo. My friend made a really great gazpacho the other day, and she refused to try it. The wife and I are getting a little worried as we are getting closer to Autumn, and we have soup plans. (And I realize how funny and odd that last sentence was.) There’s a clam chowder I want to make, and the wife has her eye on a couple of different French stews that she wants to try. We both found a mushroom soup recipe that we want to try, and I found a video of a Japanese vegetable soup that think would be perfect for a cool Fall lunch. I mean, we are going to move forward with the soup plans, I just really don’t want to leave the kid behind, nor turn her off to the idea of soup for the rest of her life. You know, like how people who ate too much canned tuna as a kid can never have anything with tuna in it, no matter how well prepared it is. I don’t want that to happen to the kid. But… soup. SOUP!

  • The Best Turkey Soup

    I got one more Thanksgiving thing to do, and then I will have it all out of my system.

    We ordered a smoked turkey from Greenberg Smoked Turkey, Inc. (FYI, this is not a paid sponsorship, we actually love their turkey.) As such, we saved a turkey leg specifically for this soup recipe. I guess you can say this is also part of our Thanksgiving tradition, as this soup hasn’t let us down in all the years we have made it. I will say this, we prefer swapping out the white wine for a very dry rosé, as it adds a depth that you don’t get with the white. Anyway, give it a shot

    Creamy Turkey and Wild Rice Soup

    Ingredients

    For the Turkey Broth

    • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
    • 2 onions chopped
    • 1 celery rib chopped
    • 1 turkey or chicken carcass cut into 4 pieces; NOTE: Leftover turkey wings, thighs, or drumsticks can be used in place of the carcass.
    • 3 cups white wine
    • 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth

    For the soup:

    • 1 cup wild rice
    • 2 carrots peeled and chopped
    • ½ teaspoon dried thyme
    • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
    • ¼ cup all-purpose flour
    • 1 cup heavy cream
    • 3 cups chopped cooked turkey
    • Salt and pepper

    Instructions

    For the turkey broth:

    • Melt butter in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.Cook onions, celery, and turkey carcass until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.Add wine and chicken broth and simmer over medium-low heat for 1 hour. Strain broth, discarding solids.

    For the soup:

    • Wipe out Dutch oven and toast rice over medium heat until rice begins to pop, 5 to 7 minutes.Stir in turkey broth, carrots, thyme, and baking soda and bring to boil.Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, until rice is tender, about 1 hour.
    • Whisk flour and cream in bowl until smooth.Slowly whisk flour mixture into soup. Add turkey and simmer until soup is slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serve.

    Notes

    Recipe source: Cooks Country Magazine, October / November 2007 issue

  • Nothing Particular

    The domesticity of my life has taken precedence today. Meaning that I had to make a meal plan for the family, and then go grocery shopping. The chores that need to be accomplished for the stay at home parent. I’m not complaining about these tasks, but I was bad at planning them this week. Normally I make the plan and shopping list the night before, so that I can go take care of it as soon as I get done dropping the kid off at school. Thus, freeing up the rest of the day for things I want to do.

    So, I got a late start today, and as such, I am writing later than I was planning. Some days are like that. Some days are just go go go, and I don’t get what I want. It has to be delayed, because I’m a grown up, and that’s what life is sometimes like for a grown up.

    And as I ran my errands, walking through the Upper West Side to get to the Trader Joe’s, the pang of missing my mother hit me. Not crushing, but just that a pang because out of nowhere, I thought about her stuffed peppers that she used to make, and home the smell of those peppers cooking would permeate the entire house, and how I hated that smell as it informed me of a meal that I wouldn’t enjoy, but there was no sense in complaining. The rest of the family loved it, and I was the odd man out that would have to put up with it. And even if my mother magically came back and made stuffed peppers for me, I still would not eat it. That meal sucked.  

  • Drinking on a Tuesday Night

    Last night, an old friend of mine took me out for dinner and drinks. Turns out it was more drinks than dinner. In the West Village, we sat outside in one of those sidewalk shanties that have a heater in it. We were the only two idiots out there, and I say idiots because it was like 38 degrees last night. But the alternative was that we would have been inside a very tiny restaurant/bar where no one had a mask on, and we both have kids that aren’t vaccinated, so not wanting to take any risks, outside we sat.

    The pretense of this dinner was to get together and talk about The BEATLES: Get Back doc, as we both are rather huge BEATLES fans. But in all honesty, it was just an excuse to hang out with an old friend and catch up. And we talked very loudly in that shanty. So loud that someone yelled at us to shut up at 11pm, and then the restaurant manager came out and politely told us to lower our voices. Then at midnight, she threw our drunk asses out. They were closing, and  we apologized, while my friend tipped a large amount. Hopefully, we’ll be welcomed back.

    I walked my friend back to their apartment building, as they were a bit more drunk than me, and I wanted to make sure they got home safe. Old friends walking down a very quiet street of Federal styled townhomes, being a bit obnoxious, and laughing too much. My friend made it home, and we promised each other to do this again, and soon.

    And then I did something that I hadn’t done in a long time, I just wandered around the West Village. Cutting back and forth on streets, looking at buildings, and blinking Christmas lights in windows. More and more storefronts are closed, and there weren’t many people out, so a high-end ghost town feel was clinging on the neighborhood. And as I made my way to the White Horse Tavern to see if the literary specters were out and howling; but that bar closed at midnight.

    So, I hailed a cab, and told the driver my cross streets in Harlem, which he accepted without complaint. I expected a fast ride up the West Side Highway, but at 14th street he headed up 10th Avenue, and we rolled quickly up the length of Manhattan. From 23rd Street, we ran non-stop, hitting every green light – it felt like a Christmas Miracle, but it could be due to no traffic at 1am. Finally, we were felled by the intersection at 123rd of all places, where our luck ran out, and we were held by a red.

    It has been very hard living in the City for the past two years, pretty much stuck in our neighborhood. Sometimes I forget how much I like it here. A place that can fill you with excited energy one moment, and try to break you down the next. But it is still a place I love living in.