Soup's on

Jim called me this afternoon, sick as a dog. He had already called in sick to work, something that he has never done. While he has called into work before, he's never done it so early. Jim is the type of guy to be seriously sick before missing work. And because of that, he typically waits until the last possible second just to make sure that he really is too sick. I was absolutely shocked.

I called him a couple of times to check in over the rest of the day and on the way home, I asked him if he wanted some soup. I specifically stated that I didn't have any chicken to make chicken noodle soup and that it was pretty much the only thing I couldn't make for him. Two seconds later he's requesting chicken noodle soup. Finally he settled on minestrone, something I was relatively confident I could accommodate him with. I don't keep a whole lot of canned soup on hand, and I definitely prefer to make things from scratch, so part of me was glad that he didn't ask for Campbell's. Plus he would have been limited to Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Chicken, and Tomato. Those are the only soups that I keep on hand because they can be used as bases for simple and quick casserole dishes.

Anyway, I was a little worried at first because the Giada book (Everyday Pasta) I thought I needed wasn't at Jim's house. But a quick flip through Giada's Family DInners produced a recipe for Winter Minestrone Soup. And amazingly enough, I had just about every ingredient on hand. Considering the rather lengthy list, I consider the dish meant to be.

It started out with a sofrito, but since I didn't have any celery (the one missing thing), I just threw in some extra carrots. Fresh spinach and diced potato went in next, followed by a can of diced tomatoes and fresh rosemary sprigs. The spinach was a substitute for swiss chard, but when I originally read the recipe, I had always planned on swapping spinach for chard, so it was perfect that I happened to have a bag of fresh spinach that needed to be used up. I pureed some cannellini beans with beef broth in the food processor and added it to the pot to simmer it with the rest of the beef stock and a paremsan rind until the potatoes finished cooking. Finally I added the rest of the whole beans and some fresh Italian parsley. Some black pepper finished the soup off. The rosemary sprigs and rind came out and Jim got a hot fresh bowl of soup in less than an hour.



I left him to go eat dinner with M & R. In honor of Jim, we went to Rubio's. I stayed simple with a salad and iced tea, while M & R got burritos and a fish taco apiece. It was a fun dinner, full of laughter and good times. Tonight the main topic of conversation was that of weddings. Watching M squirm was entertaining as always. Matt thought my salad was gross, and truth be told, there wasn't a whole lot to it. But salad is salad, and it's a decently healthy snack.



Tomorrow I'll have to go get some chicken so I can make Jim's chicken noodle soup. Barefoot Contessa has a recipe for it that seems very simple.

I still can't get over how I had all the ingredients on hand for Jim's soup. It's unusual for me to have fresh spinach on hand. Plus there was beef stock that I used last week for Jim's filet mignon, I had exactly two cloves of garlic left, a parmesan rind in the freezer, carrots and potatoes needing to be eaten up, and rosemary that was still good. Although I actually did have pancetta on hand, I omitted it since I didn't think Jim needed the meat. But to have all of the ingredients (minus celery) on hand without planning it? Amazing. Jim said it was good. I didn't try it on account of the beef stock, but it looked yummy. The puree really thickened up the soup once it cooled down. Very pleasant surprise. Jim had a second serving after I got done eating with M & R and had some garlic bread with it.