Making Soup

I’m pretty sure I’ve said before that I’m not really a cook. I prepare food for meals, but make things from scratch that’s more than frying fish or making a grilled cheese sandwich? It doesn’t happen often. But a few weeks ago I came across a soup recipe that not only sounded tasty, but easy enough even for me to make.

Naturally, the next time I was somewhere to buy groceries, I hadn’t put the soup ingredients on my list. I actually remembered everything, though, except that it needed three, not just two, cans of black beans. And for the life of me I couldn’t find chile paste at that store. Eventually I picked up the third can and tracked down the chile paste, but I still needed to wash the blender that had been in storage for about eleven years. Lately I’ve been lucky to remember to run the dishwasher, let alone keep up with the rest of the dishes, but on Saturday I had a little time to myself and finally got the blender ready.

Yesterday’s schedule ended up being a little crazier than planned, including that I had to buy new chicken stock because I drank what I had on hand earlier in the week when I was sick. But as soon as I got home at about 5:00 PM, I started in on the soup. Less than an hour later my nephew and I were happily eating it.

I wish I had had cooking spray (I just assumed I had some, but since I mostly use stoneware or nonstick pans for baking, I guess I haven’t needed it) because I’m pretty sure the dutch oven is going to be a chore to clean, and when I make it again I’ll probably double the corn, but otherwise, it was a rare cooking success.

Note: I’m going to attempt to participate in NaBloPoMo and NaKnitMo (Ravelry link) again this year. Neither worked out great last year, but I was in the middle of buying and settling into a new home, so I can’t be any busier this year than that, right? Oh, right. The nephew living with me. But that story will have to wait for another blog post.