The unearthly cold has put me in the mood for soup. Normally, I associate soup with soup kitchens. Soup is for people that have no teeth, like babies and winos and really old wrinkly people. Normal people do not eat soup. Or sup soup. Or sup soup through a straw. Normal people eat roast beef and other chewy things that require teeth and the jaw muscles to masticate.
Ok, so maybe I am getting old and feeling the cold. Or maybe I am the only person in the street without one of those wonderful new split system air conditioning things that cools in summer and warms in winter and keeps our coal fired power stations running full blast all year round. Where the fuck is the greenhouse effect when you need it? The birds are practially falling frozen from the sky, and I don't hear any greenies bleating on about carbon dioxide and global warming and Antarctica melting and drowning the penguins and things. They are probably all stuck in Newtown, huddled around a fireplace, wrapped in home knitted jumpers and beanies and burning their last copies of Green Lefty, or whatever it is called. I can hear them arguing now:
Jeremy: "Don't burn the April 1996 edition - that is a classic with a polemic by Fidel Castro on the evils of privatised electricity distribution networks".
Samantha: "Screw Castro, I'm freezing".
Jeremy: "Well then burn the August 2002 edition - that features Peter Garret and the whole copy is dedicated to the horror of nuclear power generation".
Edwin: "No, we cant burn that one - what will we have to wave at the next Labor Party state conference when they debate where to resume land to build the first 5 nuclear power plants?"
Samantha: "Who cares about next years conference? I just want to survive the winter. Burn the lot".
Which is kind of what people in the 3rd world do when they need firewood for cooking and heating etc. They just burn down whatever forest or rain forest comes to hand, and bugger tomorrow. It's pretty hard to worry about tomorrow when you are just trying to live through today.
Like me trying to survive today, huddled in my freezing garret watching.... dear God, some women should not be allowed to own 4WD's. I have just watched one pull up next to the park opposite our place to walk the dogs. She managed to completely misjudge the corner and mounted the kerb whilst attempting to park. As in park on a straight stretch of road that is maybe 300m long. With no car parked for at least 100m either side. Wingnut. Panel beaters are never going to go out of business. She owns labradors. That must say it all.
Where was I - ah yes, soup. Being in a lazy, frozen state of mind, I wanted to cook something that generated the least amount of washing up. The more time spent in front of the useless little blow heater that we have, the better. I this weather, one just can't go past pea and ham soup. My inspiration for soup comes from no other than Tex at Whackingday. I was reading a post about soup recently and it stuck in my mind. So I bought some bacon bones this week and resolved to make soup or freeze to death in the attempt.
There was just one problem with making pea and ham soup - the ham bit. The missus is a bit down on the whole meat thing, so I had to make a ham-less pea and ham soup. ie, chop up onion, carrot and celery, soften in butter, then add peas and water and cook. The result was - ugh, fucking awful. It tasted like celery soup with a hint of carrot. It was quite gross, particularly as it was lacking in that essential artery hardening ingredient known as salt. Soup cooked with stock is good. Using water just produces mushy vegetables.
I discovered however that you don't need stock if you add the bacon bones as about half a tonne of salt leaches out of the bacon, making the soup taste a bit like pea and ham brine. If you used stock instead of water, you'd probably make something that looked like a green version of the Dead Sea.
I also discovered that bacon bones and mainly, well, bones. You buy a kilo of bones and get maybe 1/3 of a kilo of salt, 1/8 kilo of meat and the rest is bones. Lots of little bones. Bones that get caught in the blender thing that you are using and make a terrible noise until you hit the off switch.
As you can gather, I have not made pea and ham soup before.
I thought it looked a bit thin and listless, so I left it on the stove for half an hout to thicken up. Except that I got absorbed in watching something and had to be reminded a few hours later that I still had soup going on the stove. If you have ever hung up wallpaper and used wallpaper hanging paste, then you will understand the type of soup that I created. It is real, good old fashioned goo. I don't need a spoon to get it out of the pot - I can use a fork.
So it is probably not much good for winos. You definitely can't suck it through a straw. It's a screw up that has worked out for the best.
As for the pea soup.....that's better off not being discussed.
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