Three Day Cook

Tuesday. New Year, so time to clean the pantry.  Who bought all these pastas? Two sizes of penne? Hmmm... Six boxes of crackers. Need to have another party and throw some cream cheese onto a plate. White beans. Huge purple beans. Are these split peas or green lentils? Whew, got all that stuff off the top of the pantry in. Well except that bag of peas/lentils. And today it's a little cold, so, soups on!

How to fix? Well, i'll start by soaking them. You do that with dried  beans, right? So into a bowl at 8. Tic tok out to walk.  (Which, by the way, was great.).  Into a pot at 3:30.  Six cups of water. Seems like too much. Oh well, I'll fix that later. Throw in some garlic. And what? Thyme? I'm thinking of cooking it down and then throwing into the blender [sadly, I don't have an immersion blender though I am coveting a Cuisinart Smart Stick CSB-76. Hint hint.]  5:00 and Nat's homework is done. Whoohoo! Check the pot. Have to add more water? Another two cups of broth. What's up with that? Still has a lot of bite. Too crunchy to whiz in the blender so hit the heat. Fixing up the tacos we are having for dinner and realize we wont be having soup any day soon.  Cooked until 6:00. Cost another cup of broth. At 7:30, I give up for the day. Into the fridge the pot goes...

Wednesday. Ignoring the pot of half cooked soup in the fridge.  Drag it onto the fire at 3:00.  Here we go again. Added another cup of broth. We're at 10 cups people! Still tastes like 3-minute Captain Crunch [don't make me explain that]. Chinese for dinner with no side of soup. One more cup of water. No broth, not wasting good broth on stone soup. At 6:00 pm it seemed to almost taste cooked. A bit of crunch, but edible. A little dente. Cook 10 minutes. Stir. Taste. Texture tastes like something thay would be awesome with warm naan. So, I add some some curry stuff. One more cup of water. I may this bag of peas/lentils into something! At 7:30 I have to get Natalie out of the bath and start putting in her dreadlocks. Long story. Phone rings, landlord selling villa may continue to interfere with our life. Surprise. 8:30. Done with mommy stuff. Night babycakes!

I head downstairs and think that my downstairs smells like a construction site. But there is a construction site next door so this is familiar. As I descend to the bottom step, I try to think back to the moment when I turned off the soup. Of course I would do that before I headed upstairs, right? Yes. Sure I did. As I enter the kitchen I see/smell that in fact I DID NOT turn off the stove. My pea/lentil soup is now a baked pea/lentil cake with a burned bottom. And it smells like burnt hair which might indicate that maybe it wasn't peas or lentils? I am too depressed to even clean out the pan. I toss it into the sink and add hot water half way up. I think I am chuckling as I close the door to the small kitchen, but I don't remember as I have worked hard to eliminate this particular memory out of the banks of my brain.

Next morning after Natalie goes to school, I open the door to the small kitchen. The pea/lentil bread has actually turned back into some sort of soup. I tossed it out for the cats.

So, after 12 cups of liquid, 7 1/2 hours of soaking before cooking, 10 hours soaking partially cooked in the fridge, 9 1/2 hours of cooking, and a final 12 hours of soaking in the sink, Soup's On!

I think I will stick with sandwiches for the rest of the winter.