Improvising

Well, after twenty years of marriage, Karen has finally corrupted me in the kitchen.

After all that time being the master of dishes requiring precise measuring, temperature, and time, like rice, cookies, and bread, I have now created something completely out of my head. The kitchen may never be the same.

The dish was a simple potato soup. I took eight or nine potatoes and peeled and cubed them. I stuck them in a pot with enough water to cover them and a bit of salt and boiled them for 15 minutes. Then I added more water and let it simmer for about an hour. Then I added more water, milk, and some pepper. I chopped up some frozen brocolli (which nobody in the house would eat because I accidentally got chopped instead of florets) in a food processor and dumped that in. I grated a few ounces of leftover cheese and dumped that in. Then I added celery salt and garlic and chopped onion, and left it all boil down for awhile while I made grilled cheese sandwiches.

And it was good! This could have a serious influence on my style of cooking. This could be really, really dangerous. I could get used to this.

What made it even funnier was that I had just finished reading The Tale of Despereaux as a bedtime story to William and Daniel. If you don't know the story (which was made into a pretty bad movie just recently), one of it's key plot points is that the King, after his wife dies of shock when a rat falls into her soup, rashly outlaws soup and anything involved in the making or eating of soup. And as it turns out, soup is what finally saves the day.

Soup certainly has saved me from being chained to a recipe. I just hope all of my culinary adventures have such a happy ending.