09.09.08
Rainy days are soup days
This morning the rain started around 9:00. There were two sections to the storm, and the first wave provided a continuous rain, heavy at times until just after noon. I spent the morning watching the weather radar on my computer to time my walks with Chester. In between walks, I washed eight large leaves of lettuce, wrapped them in a linen towel and put them in the frig to dry, and spent time on the two poetry forums. Instead of using the leftover pork roast for the bean soup, I defrosted leftover ham from two months ago. It was baked with ginger ale, cloves, and honey, and I’ve used ham cooked with this recipe before for different soups. It always comes out very well.
At noon, I added the ham after I diced it, stirred the soup, added a cup of water and left it alone. The rain has stopped and there was a large area on the weather radar devoid of rain so I drove over to the O & A Farms produce stand to pick up cucumbers, bell peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, and red onions to add to the lettuce for a salad to go with the bean soup. On the way home, I stopped at Genuardi’s Market and bought a wonderful loaf of an artisan bread to toast for garlic bread. When I got home, I prepped the vegetables I was going to add to the salad and put them in the frig for later.
I spent a few hours on the two poetry forums and then at 5:00 this afternoon I took Chester out for a walk and worked on the pond. While we were out, I measured the water level in a bucket that I sat on the sidewalk before the rain started. We received 2 inches of rain, that’s 6 inches since Saturday. As the minutes ticked by, the second wave of rain continued to dissipate, and finally disappeared. Daniel had told me he would probably be late this evening because of a project he was working on for a client, so started to take the things I needed out of the frig to finish making dinner.
At 5:30 PM Daniel called to say he was on his way home. I rushed through making the salad and sliced the bread, drizzled it with olive oil and then sprinkled it with garlic powder. Daniel arrived home just as I was putting the garlic bread in the toaster oven so I offered him his bowl of salad to start. The soup was gently boiling in the crock pot so I ladled out two bowls and let them cool a bit while the garlic bread was toasting. I usually just have bread and butter with soup but the garlic added a special something to the meal. I’ll have to do it again.
O.P.W.