Cooking Soup

I don't cook. I understand food and it's complexity. I love eating it. I just suck at making it. On occasion I feel the need to try making something because cooking a dinner can be fun and sometimes it works out great. I do this once, maybe twice a year. So I will state once again, I don't cook.

Last night I was at Casey's apartment with two friends. One is his roommate, the other is a weirdo we have both known and loved for years. I will call him Chad, because that is his name. So I bring over a couple ingredients for a gazpacho that Casey wants to try making. We are going to make this lovely soup, some scalloped potatoes from a box, and Chad brought 99cent bread from Traitor Joe's that we baked ourselves.

Things start off okay. We are chopping and mixing the ingredients like Bon Appetite told us to. I am stirring up the olive oil with what looks like butt-loads of tarragon but I'm following the recipe so I'm sure it is fine. Casey hands me all the crap I need to measure and mix including the salt and freshly ground pepper. I finish it up and I don't bother to taste it because it is a bowl full of oil and tarragon. Then Chad asks for the salt to add to the bread. When I try to hand it to him he rejects it and informs me by pointing to the large lettering that it is SUGAR. Crap. Oh well. Casey didn't read it either obviously but it does make me wonder how many times he has sugared his food and not realized it. This was just the beginning of our adventures.

Casey and Chad are both control freaks in the kitchen so I just stood there most of the time. That is the safest thing to do. I wasn't paying attention so I don't know how this happened but when it was time to strain the soup we discovered that what was supposedly enough for four servings made approximately one cup of soup. Hmmmm. I now have to assume one of the main problems was that I have no idea what 3 1/2 pounds of tomatoes would look like and I had to depend on the crappy scale at the grocery store which probably didn't work properly. Too late now. So what are we going to do? Instead of straining we will throw it all in a blender. But it still isn't a whole lot of soup and it's really thick. Adding water was denied. I suggested Vodka which was quickly denied. I still stand by that idea though. What could be better than Bloody Mary Soup? I opened the fridge and pointed at the spicy V8 in the door. We don't know how long it was in there but it was approved and added to the blender. The result? Deliciousness!

Sounds horrible right? Well, it was quite good. In the meantime the roommate had ordered a pizza and was finished by the time our meal was done. Chad forgot to oil the sheet before baking the bread pita style so that was a little torn up but for the record, 99cent bread from Traitor Joe's is very tasty. Hooray for cooking! Can't wait to try it again next year.

In completely unrelated news, Today is the birthday of Dana over at Amid Life's Crisis. Happy birthday Dana! I'm rolling out the tarp. Here is your card:



Unless you are into that sort of thing. Then may your birthday be a plethora of it.