Well, it’s happened. After the months of this endless winter, I’ve had enough of soup.
That realization hit me last night as I sat down to my latest soup. It’s fine soup, I guess. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s good or bad. But I couldn’t get excited about it, and now I’ve got a bunch leftover, of course, which I’ll also have to eat. Waste not, want not, you know.
This latest batch, perhaps, wasn’t different enough from a dozen other soups I’ve made this winter. It started with the usual flavorings—onion, carrot, celery, garlic, olive oil—to which I added lentils, brown rice, ground coriander seed, bay leaf, green peppers (still using last summer’s peppers) and water, and simmered. After about an hour, I added salt, canned diced tomatoes and coarsely chopped Swiss chard. Heated through. The result? Lentil soup, again.
Perhaps the lack of interest was aggravated by yet another cold front moving through yesterday afternoon. Last night’s low: 14 degrees. Tomorrow’s forecast: snow. It’s as if Mother Nature is saying, “OK, you complained last year when I gave you all that glorious weather in February, so I’ll give you plenty of winter this year.” To be fair, most of us didn’t complain about that glorious, unseasonably warm weather, at least not until the plants sprang to life early and Mom Nature zapped all the early fruit blossoms out of the trees in March.
Well, there’s no danger of that happening again this year, although other natural calamities are always a possibility. I don’t know how people in Michigan and upstate New York and the like stand their winters. Comfort food isn’t so comforting after a while.
Yes, I taste some sunshine in the oranges and grapefruit I buy, but I want to smell some dirt and see green things besides the occasional, bold tulip or daffodil poking up through the soil. I want the outdoors to be more hospitable than they’ve been with the cold and snow, the snow and cold. I want to eat tender local spinach and lettuces, maybe even the damned radishes. Just please, Mother Nature, please send spring!
This reminds me of a bit from a comedy routine I saw a little while ago. The guy said he was walking down the street, enjoying the sunshine and commented to a passerby, “Boy, this is some great weather we’re having today.” To which said passerby responded, “Damn global warming.” The comedian pursed his lips, squinted his eyes and said, “this is the kind of thing that makes me want to put a brick through a Prius.” Mos def.
Janet Majure // Feb 16, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Funny. And a soup footnote: I added a significant amount of red wine vinegar to the leftovers, which seemed to be just what it needed, thank goodness.
Katie // Mar 5, 2008 at 11:01 am
Janet, whenever I get this problem (“Result: lentil soup again”) I think about what our great-grandparents, the ones we glorify as “recognizing real food,” thought in the winter. :-D