Just Bite Me Blog

And here you thought today was Monday–maybe even a holiday, as it was for me. What it really was, however, was Do Something with All the Damn Carrots in the Refrigerator Day. As with so many things, the answer is “soup.”

So, along with the 6.5 pounds of carrots (yes, you read that right, and that was AFTER peeling and trimming them), I included lots of onions, some candied ginger that was sitting around in sugar syrup in the fridge, a wad of garlic (about a head), a bit of candied orange peel, about three-quarters of a cup of pumpkin (180 grams, if you care) left over from the brioche experiment, some chicken broth and wild turkey broth, and some spices–salt, pepper, garam masala, powdered ginger, and some powdered mustard. The one thing I did that was a major extra step was roasting the carrots after I sliced them. I thought the roasting would improve and deepen the flavor, and it likely did. I more or less pureed the whole thing (I used my stick blender, but I left it somewhat chunky). I think I’m going to eat it with some of the spinach from the farm share as well–I’m hoping the astringency of the spinach will work with the sweetness of the carrots.

The other thing that likely will help is perhaps a dollop of sour cream mixed in. I intended to freeze most of this in lunch packages, and I don’t like to freeze cream-based soups, but that’s easy enough to add when I heat it. Some milk, or even some rice milk or almond milk would probably work well, too, or I could make up another batch of horchata and use some of that, just make it less sweet.

It tastes fine–it’ll be good with a hunk of bread of some kind, and whatever additional veggies and/or liquid I put in it. It wasn’t completely exactly what I had in mind, but I was kind of vague about what I wanted to do. I think I was fantasizing about a creamy soup, and I think my proposed additions above will get me there. We’ll see.

I also made a triple batch (!!) of the Amazing Crackers yesterday, some of which are slated for a friend’s house. He made a special request, as cheese, crackers, and venison summer sausage is his favorite evening snack-instead-of-dinner meal.

But I could not, simply could not, motivate myself to do anything else in the kitchen. (Oh, wait; I refreshed the starter and took out the garbage; does that count?) I contemplated baking some cookies today, but could not get past the contemplation stage.

Then again, I think of days like today–when I sit around, work out a bit, read a bunch, make some soup, scritch the cat behind the ears–as my payoff for the other long days in the kitchen. I know I have enough lunch packages in the freezer to go without cooking for several weeks, and I don’t have much of the farm share sitting around to be used (except canned tomatos, frozen squash, cabbages, spinach that will get eaten this week, some turnips, and one unused bag of carrots). What is sitting around is in a form that will not rot, so it’s all good, and I could take today to be lazy-esque without either running out of lunches or having raw ingredients rotting in my fridge.

I’m sorry–none of this is particularly exciting, is it? Apparently today is also Boring Day–but, as it was a day off of work as well, I can live with that.