The Cleaner Plate Club

I’ve got a few memes to follow up on. Blogging’s been tough this week but Expat tagged me with one that felt manageable, as I could more or less write it in the span of a single shower. The challenge: write your memoir in six words or less. It’s based on a bet that Hemingway once made — that he couldn’t write a story in six words. He could, and he did:

For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.

(for the record, he apparently considered it his finest piece of writing).

Smith magazine, not the College’s publication, but the writing ‘zine, offered a similar challenge, by the way. They published the results in a book, and you can read the entries here. But forget them. This one is all about me.

A number have occurred to me, including the self-deprecating:

Other folks are this flawed. Maybe.

Distractable? Nah, I’m just…Hey! Food!

Crack myself up. Laugh alone, mostly.

I also considered the romantic-in-its-own-way:

He loves me. Not clear why.

I’d choose this madness again, Darling!

We laugh often. And smooch…sometimes.

And there is, of course, the vaguely desperate:

Kids holler. Dogs bark. Wine, please.

And the inevitable food entries:

Learned about food. Then about fear.

Shooting for healthy. Kids prefer chips.

Started cooking. Stopped cleaning. Mice thrilled.

But I think the one that feels most right, most honest, is (drumroll, please!):

Intentions good. Reality harder. Hello, Hell!

Now, according to the rules, I have to tag some others with this meme. So, I tag…YOU. That’s right, YOU.

(yes, why are you looking around saying “who, me?” Of course I mean YOU).

Look, here’s the thing: I really think that this is kind of fascinating, like taking a quick snapshot of someone’s brain (”People’s inner workings revealed. But quickly” - look, I can’t stop doing it!). Besides which, I’m not that much of a rule-player (“Forget rules. Never liked ‘em, anyway” Okay, stop it already!).

How would you guys would sum yourselves up in six words? It’s a fun challenge. Plus? You can do it in the shower. And it’s only six words. Unless, like me, you find you can’t stop. (In the shower, six words multiply).

You know there’s a primary election coming up when your co-op starts selling local cheese that looks this:

Washed? Sure. Obama seems very clean. But Stout is not a word that leaps to mind with Obama. But then again, the same dairy also sold a cheese called Tomme de Lay, a raw goat’s milk cheese that they describe as having equal pungency and hints of grass and mushrooms.

(in that case, “raw” works well, but “hints of grass and mushrooms?” Pretty sure you’ve got the wrong guy).

Urban Forager describes Barick Obama as “a bold cheese, ready to take on the world.” Like a hot political campaign, though, it ain’t cheap: $24/lb. Yowza.

Seven Days mentioned that Laini Fondiller, the gal who owns Lazy Lady Farm, also has a fondness for mixing the political and the…um…turophilic. She has a boar named Brownie, ’cause he “does a heck of a job.” She also had a goat named Harriet Miers, after Bush’s former White House counsel, but things didn’t work out. She got sold for meat.

Two pieces of news from the paying-more-isn’t-always-worth-more category:

1. Ashton’s Birthday Bash leads to shots (in the butt?): Surely you’ve read about this one somewhere already. I live under a rock, so if I know about it, well, it’s probably old news to you. But in case your rock is bigger and more media-proof than my own, get this: Ashton Kutcher, hunky dumpling of the celebrity circuit, recently had a 30th birthday party at hip downtown Socialista. The party was filled with the expected star guests — Madonna, Bruce Willis, Ivanka Trump — and possibly one uninvited guest, as well: Hepatitis A. One of Socialista’s employees had hepatitis A, and now it’s recommended that all those celebs get shots to protect themselves against the nasty bug.

At this point, I’m going to refrain from the obvious “A-list/Hepatitis-A-list” jokes, and tell you instead that I once caught hep A and it was no damned fun. I was sick as a dog, I hurled every time I moved, and all kinds of other things happened that — trust me — you’d really rather not know (note to my mother: please refrain. Please). This was back when Hepatitis A was apparently 500% more common than it is today. The worst part of it all was that my friends had to get shots in the buttocks, in the event that I had been less-than-vigilant about washing my hands after doing my business. (in my own defense, I tend to be very, very careful about that. But apparently many people aren’t. Which is why I am now a regular Howard Hughes in public restrooms, often going through crazy contortions to TOUCH NOTHING). Anyhow, these friends of mine — true friends, most of them, as we are STILL friends, even after this — had to pull down their knickers and get a fat needle injected into their tushies. That was a while ago, but apparently physicians still often administer the shot right there in the keister. Oh, those pretty, pretty celebrity booties!

All of which is a mighty long way of saying that sometimes places with $16 cocktails are no cleaner or more savory than McDonalds. Best to cook at home tonight.

2. The no-chrome blender wins: This second piece isn’t nearly as celebrity-studded, but it makes me happy. I mentioned my immersion blender in my recent soup post, noting that my cheap-o model had served me well for years. The folks at the Washington Post have clearly been paying close attention to the Cleaner Plate Club (who isn’t?), because they’ve since published an article, Toward Greater Whirled Peas, which reviews 11 hand blenders…and their favorite one was one of the least expensive in the bunch: the Hamilton-Beach hand blender, about $20. No brushed comb, no sleek styling there. Just a solid piece of equipment.

I do my darndest to avoid kitchen-gadget-envy. It is hard sometimes, like when the Williams Sonoma catalog arrives and I start to believe that my life would genuinely be better — simpler! better tasting! more heaven-bound! — if only I had a $150 salt/pepper mill set. But I do my best to refrain, and to this day, I do not own a single All-Clad pan. So when I read the review, I had to cheer for the unswanky little fella’.

Not quite as hard as I cheered for my sister, perhaps. But a little.

While you’re being penny-wise, you might want to stop by Cheap Healthy Good, which combines two big categories of the blogosphere — foodie blogging and personal-finance blogging —into one highly practical little corner of web 2.0. Bascially, she breaks the costs of recipes down better than I’ve seen elsewhere. And, oh, she is thrifty! She’s got a series of soup recipes, for example, whose total cost appears to top out at under $6/pot.

Now I’m gonna’ go be frugal and put a pot on the stove with some homemade chicken stock. I’ll be making it in my (unglamorous, but functional) Farberware soup pot. And I’ll wash my hands first.

(so Ashton? Cutie pie? You can celebrate your 31st birthday here. I promise, my hands are very, very clean).

Oh, yeah. BIG HUGE OSCAR WIN for my sister last night. To the so-many-of-you who have sent happy notes of congratulations, my thanks, and hers, too. At some point, I might add to this post a video of me watching her win - but try to imagine me screaming, wide-eyed, “Wooooooooooo! That’s my SISTER! THAT’S MY SISTER!!!!” and you’ll basically get the idea.

(and to all you parents out there: if you’ve got a kid who pretends to do commercials for Wella Balsam shampoo in the bathtub, or who insists on wearing the same Laura Ingalls costume to school EVERY SINGLE DAY of third grade, then cheer. Because you just might see that kid on the red carpet someday).

Be honest. You came here expecting bad news. Something stomach-turning, probably. Am I right?

Tonight, there shall be no bad news. No food woes, no grocery store jitters. Nope. Tonight, the Cleaner Plate Club is all about comfort.

It’s been cold today, and snowing. Not a big snowstorm — something less dramatic and yet more relentless. Icky roads from morning until nightfall. Wiper blades that kept gathering ice and smearing slush across my winshield. By this point in February, frankly, I’m a little worn down from the cold, from the grey skies. It’s time for something cozy. Something warm.

So put a pot on the stove, light the kindling in your fireplace, shut the doors against the elements, and let’s settle in for the ultimate in a comfort food dinner: cheddar broccoli soup. Shall we?

This recipe was inspired by one of the Middle Earth recipes I found when I decided to become a hobbit — I took a stab at my own version of the cheddar stew mentioned over at the Lord of the Rings fan site.

A confession: I’ve always been a little afraid of cheddar-type soups. It always just seemed so milky, so…artery-hardening, somehow. That’s why I was delighted, absolutely delighted, to discover that you can make a cheddar soup — heck, maybe all cheddar soup is this way — that is almost entirely comprised of vegetables. Mostly vegetables! And yet it tastes just like cheddar cheese!

It does feel like there’s a little Elvin magic at work somehow. Plus it’s easy! And, friends, it is just the perfect thing for a cold, snowy February day.

And? Kids love it.

Ingredients:
Update: see Anna’s notes about making it more friendly for diabetics and low-carb types, in the comments section! Thanks, Anna!
4 small carrots
2 small-ish potatoes
1 large leek
1 stalk celery
1/2 teaspoon thyme
pinch of sage
1 clove garlic, chopped
4 cups of veggie broth
1-2 cups water
1 cup milk
big hunk o’ cheddar (about a quarter pound)
florets of 1 head broccoli, steamed

Okay, chop your leeks, potatoes, carrots, and celery:

Melt some butter in a pot. Add garlic and stir. Add your chopped veggies, thyme, and sage. Sautee them for about 3-4 minutes on medium heat. Then vegetable broth (for those of you using the Imagine boxes, it’s 1 large box). Add a cup of water if you want very thick soup, or 2 cups if you like your soup to be a little thinner. Let simmer away:

I’ll just point out: Tain’t nothin’ in that pot that’s not a vegetable! Not yet, anyway. Feel virtuous. Once the veggies are very soft (15 minutes if you sliced the veggies thin, longer if the pieces were larger), add a cup of milk. Then you need to run the whole thing through a blender. I used my hand-held “immersion blender”, the kind that you dip right into the pot. It might not be as effective as blending in an actual blender, but it works fine and oh-so-dramatically cuts down on the mess. (don’t have one? lots of options, many of them inexpensive. We have a cheapo, a Sunbeam, and it’s served us well for years).

Anyhow, then it starts looking more like this:

At about this point, you’ll want to have some broccoli florets steaming away. Add cheese. I started grating the cheese, then I realized “Hey, this is a waste of my time, because it’s all gonna’ melt anyway.” So then I took the lazy cook’s shortcut, and just started breaking it into little pieces. The total quantity filled a 1-cup measuring cup to the top, half of it grated, half broken. It looked like this:

Stir it in until melted, remove pot from heat, and dump the now-steamed broccoli in:

Add salt and pepper to taste. I didn’t add much, because the soup tasted pretty darned good without. In the end, it looked like this:

Actually, it looked much better than that, particularly with a big hunk of crusty bread. But my camera was running low on batteries, and that’s the only photo I was able to snap before the camera shut angrily on me, leaving me with inexplicable feelings of inadequacy and shame. Electronics can do that to me.

My kids loved this soup. And so did Blair. And you know what? I did too, and it helped me put years of cheddar-soup-skepticism behind me. I don’t mean to go all Jessica Seinfeld on you — I’m not a fan of the stealth-vegetable tactic — but it was nice knowing that this soup was far more veggie-rich than it appeared.

It was filling, cheap, and pretty darned easy. And it was comfy-cozy. The perfect thing to fend off midwinter’s chill.

Earlier this year, Marc of Mental Masala reported in the Ethicurean that if you added up all of the meat that was recalled since 1994, it would comprise a line of 7,500 trucks stretching 85 miles.

In a single day, that fleet grew to 11,000 trucks stretching 125 miles. The USDA finally recalled meat from Westland/Hallmark, the California meatpacker whose efforts to help downer cows pass inspection would seem almost valiant if they weren’t so perverse. The total meat recalled in this one recall? 143 million pounds — nearly half of the meat that has been recalled since 1994.

We’ve talked about this before, in rhyme no less, but the more this whole situation unfolds, the more it seems sort of …absurdly…funny. Funny? Yeah, in a better-laugh-so-you-don’t-cry sort of way. Here’s why:

Laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact #1: the USDA had a full-time veterinary medical officer assigned to the facility AND a full-time official from the USDA’s Grading Service in the operation to ensure that Westland/Hallmark complied with the USDA commodity program contract — and, hey, those guys never noticed a problem!

Laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact #2: The Westland/Hallmark facility had 17 third party audits, 12 internal audits and weekly humane handling audits? And, hmm. None of those audits managed to catch this?

Laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact #3: the USDA announced the recall midday Sunday of a holiday weekend. What an odd, low-profile time to issue a recall. It’s almost like they were hoping it wouldn’t be noticed. Maybe so, since most of the recalled meat had already been eaten.

Laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact #4: After the news broke, despite all evidence to the contrary, Steve Mendell, Westland/Hallmark President and CEO, issued a statement saying “I proudly assure our customers that we comply with all USDA requirements, including the requirement that only ambulatory livestock may enter the harvest facility to be processed for human food. I am confident that we have met this high regulatory standard.” Um, Steve? Pal? I suggest you watch the video.

Laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact #5: It took the New York Times sixteen days to bother covering this story. The news just didn’t appear until they posted an editorial on February 15. Other papers, like the Cincinnati Enquirer, took even longer to cover the story. And the Denver Post? Why it summed up the controversy as mere “bickering” between the cattle industry and animal rights groups (hey, guys? It’s our food supply).

Laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact #6: Westland/Hallmark was honored by the USDA as a “supplier of the year” to the school lunch programs in 2004-2005. Go, fellas! Keep up the good work!

Laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact #7: Why, it ain’t even news! KIRO-TV Seattle aired a report about downer cows entering the food supply as far back as 2002. And Elizabeth Weise at USA Today broke a similar story in 2004.

But the biggest laugh-so-you-don’t-cry fact? The Humane Society picked the Westland/Hallmark plant at random. Not based on any kind of identified risk assessment. Completely at random. Kinda’ makes you wonder how the other 6,200 facilities are doing.

In case all of that laughing — ha ha! HA FRICKIN’ HA HA HA! — makes your stomach hurt, consider buying beef from a local supplier, or making beef-free alternatives to your favorite meal. Like chili, for example. Vegetarian? Chicken? So many options. How about burgers? Try some homemade salmon burgers. And be sure to laugh while you cook! Laugh hard! Very hard!

Because otherwise you might just start sobbing and never stop.

I’ve got two posts up at the Ethicurean this week.

The first, How I Taught My Kid to Curse and Why I Blame Big Food, is all about a naughty word. And unlike many of the posts over there, that word is not Monsanto!

The second? Well, okay, in that post, the naughty word is Monsanto. That post, An Open Letter to Monsanto, sounds like it would be all official, right? And it is. If by official you mean referencing things like Mike and Ikes and Alice from the Brady Bunch. It’s all about how Monsanto — frustrated by the widespread rejection of milk produced with the help of rBGH, their artificial growth hormone — is moving state-by-state to make rBGH labeling illegal.

Wondering how America’s favorite housekeeper fits in to that discussion? Then what are you waiting for? Click on over! Let’s meet on the other side! The readin’ is over there today!

Another kid-friendly vegetable-based option. This one I made up myself, after looking up all kinds of cauliflower-gratin type recipes and deeming them unworthy. They were not unworthy based on taste, mind you, but rather because they all had one too many dishes to be cleaned up afterwards.

We’ve established that I’m kind of a lazy cook, right? And I’m pretty sure we’ve also established that I am a lazy cleaner. It’s no joke; some days, I’m only a few steps away from becoming the kind of person who eats soup straight from the can while wearing an old dirty bathrobe. My biggest problem with all of the cauliflower-gratin recipes? They required steaming the cauliflower in a separate pot. Which makes an additional pan to clean. One pan too many, in my opinion.

So you care to point out that I could have cleaned the extra pot, probably many extra pots, in the amount of time it took to search fruitlessly for a one-dish recipe? Oh, hush up, you. It’s about inertia. You go-getter types wouldn’t understand.

Anyhow, this one is pretty simple, if inexact. It’s a good side dish, even without the separately-steamed cauliflower, and I also got two days of kindergarten lunch-box fodder out of the leftovers (it was perfect scooped over a baked potato).

I’m going to pause here to talk about dairy in general, because on the surface, this is a pretty dairy-intensive recipe. And some of you out there don’t dig dairy, because it makes you bloated and uncomfortable. I hear you, because the same thing happens to me.

We’re not alone in that. Marion Nestle says that 75% of the world’s population is lactose-intolerant, which means that we lack a stomach enzyme that can break down the lactose of milk. So the lactose remains intact, until it gets to our guts, whereupon the lactose-lovin’ bacteria that all of us harbor in our intestines have a field day gobbling up the stuff. And then? Those bacteria release gas and small molecules that attract water to our guts. Hence our bloating and, ahem, airiness. But, see, it’s not our gas. It’s the bacteria’s gas. They’re the ones who should be embarassed.

But anyway, I tell you all of this, simply to assure you dairy-fearers that you can make this recipe more tolerable-for-the-lactose-intolerant by doing what I did: using rice milk and a hard cheese. Why is a hard cheese better? Because the process of making cheese basically gobbles up all the lactose. Long diversion, I know, especially for those among you who can consume dairy with impunity and who don’t actually want to hear about the gas in other people’s guts. Anyhow.

Ingredients:

1 medium leek, chopped
Half a bunch of kale, washed, stemed and chopped into small pieces–So small that you hope your children won’t bother to complain about the green stuff.
Pat o’ butter
Florets from 1 small head cauliflower
About a cup of milk (rice milk, in my case)
1 cup cheese (cheddar in my case)
2 tablespoons flour, dissolved into a bit of milk
Few sprinkles bread crumbs
A little salt and pepper

Directions: Sautee chopped kale and leek in butter, until soft, about 5 minutes:

Chop and add cauliflower to pan. Stir, then add milk and let bubble away for a few moments, until cauliflower is a little soft:

Then add cheese, and mix through. In a separate dish, mix flour with a touch of milk. Add the flour-milk mix, and let simmer just until the milk starts to thicken. Pour the whole thing in an oven-safe pan (unless you are one of those lucky-duckies who isn’t too lazy to get out there and buy yourself an oven-safe sautee pan. As mentioned, I am not one of those, which is why I still, after all this time, do not own a single pan that can do double-duty. And because of that, I now I have an extra dish to clean. Doh! It catches up with you in the end, laziness. Yes it does. Let this be a lesson to you.):

Cover with a few sprinkles of cheese, and a few shakes of bread crumbs. Bake until browned on top:

So there it is. And it’s pretty tasty. With one less dish to clean. Just think of all the sitting-around-in-our-bathrobes that we can do with that extra time!

I’m totally in love with swiss chard these days. Really, totally head over heels. So in love that I want to return to 1987 and make out with it in a paneled basement while listening to Bon Jovi.

I would do that, if only I could figure out how.I love the chard so much that I’m considering buying one of these T-shirts. Let my love be public! I declare it to the world!

My love is big enough, bold enough, that I might even start wearing this thong:

Okay, not really. But if you want to wear them, you can. Click here to get yourself a pair.

Seriously — if chard were a stock, I’d invest. Because I happen to think it’s wildly underrated.

What is it about chard? I’ve talked before about how it is one of the world’s healthiest foods (no — literally — look here), packed with vitamins and minerals and antioxidents and other good things. But here’s the thing: I swear to you, I can taste every one of those minerals when I eat chard.

Somehow, chard packs all the goodness of the earth into these gorgeous greens that have no bitterness whatsoever.We could all do with more goodness, less bitterness, in our lives, no?

Next year, I’m going to plant chard in my garden, right beside my flowers. For what it’s worth, the town of Grinnell, Iowa, did exactly that, in nearly all of their downtown flower beds:

Then I can continue my affair with this, the eye-candy of vegetables, in the privacy of my own home.

The chard recipes with which I’ve had the most success recently have also involved squash. Yes! Squash! I’ve copied one such recipe below:

Ingredients:
3 cloves garlic
1 small delicata squash, seeded and chopped
1 bunch red-stemmed chard, chopped, with stems separated from leaves
A half cup chicken broth
1 Tablespoon Balsamic vinegar
Kosher sea salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Clean chard by soaking in water and swishing regularly. Pat dry. Separate stems from leaves. Chop stems and leaves. Sautee garlic in a little olive oil until soft, but do not overcook. Add delicata squash (note: I have learned that delicata is the one squash that you don’t need to peel, so long as you are cooking it long enough. A beautiful discovery for a lazy cook like myself!). Sautee just until they start to get a little soft. If at this point, you fear that you are going to burn either your squash or garlic, feel free to throw a splash of the broth. When you can get a knife through the squash, but it’s still firm, it’s time to add the chard stems. Sautee for about a minute, then add the broth:

Let simmer for for about 4 minutes, until the squash is nice and tender. Your quantity of broth will be reduced, but the flavor will be pulled right into those vegetables. Add leaves and balsamic vinegar and stir:

Cook until leaves start to get wilty, adding salt and pepper to taste.This one makes a nice side dish, as seen here (with some barramundi fish, which, by the way, was covered with a little Annie’s yogurt dill dressing, then baked at 375 for about 16 minutes and was really tasty):

But wait! We’re not done yet! Because this dish also makes a really brilliant pasta sauce! Oh, yes it does!

For the sauce version, I used a little extra chicken broth (maybe a quarter-cup more). I also dissolved about 2 Tablespoons of flour in an additional splash of chicken broth (whatever it takes to get the flour dissolved), added the flour-broth mix after adding the leaves, and let simmer while the sauce thickened slightly. It covered a half a box of pasta nicely, and was fantastic with some grated parmesan.

I’m telling you. This is a good one. The sweetness of the squash pairs beautifully with the hearty, slightly-salty chard. And let me remind you that mine is not a squash-eating family. Oh, no. Not if they can help it. But first time we did the squash-chard combo (the night we made it as a pasta sauce), Merrie said not a word — not one word — about the fact that her bowl had lots of squash in it (okay, she didn’t eat all the squash but she did not complain either).

And Blair? He turned to me during the meal and asked, “What is this orange stuff?”"Do you like it?” I asked.”I do. What is it?”

“It’s a vegetable,” I answered, not wanting to say the s-word out loud.

“What kind of a vegetable?”

“It grows on a vine,” I answered. “You can still get it locally.”

“But…what kind of vegetable?” he persisted, his eyes narrowing slightly with suspicion.

“It’s” — I hesitated. Then, after a pause I declared, “I’m not telling what it is. Not until you finish eating.”

He smiled then, because he knew. But he didn’t mind. Because it was so tasty. If you ask me, the chard — newfound object of my culinary infatuation — was to thank.

Attractive, filled with earthy goodness, and it’s kinda’ heroic, too, making chard…hmm…the George Clooney of vegetables, perhaps? Or the Angelina, if you roll that way?

It’s no wonder I’m in love.

Thanks, everyone, for your many sage comments on the family dinner. It got me thinking. Lots. Best of all, it even encouraged us all to sit down to a family meal of pasta with red sauce. As expected, it did not resemble this one:

(this photo, by the way, was stolen borrowed from this article, the Magic of the Family Meal, from Time Magazine. I suppose it’s a good article, although it made me shout out loud, “Okay! O-KAY! I get it! I need more family dinners! Just BACK OFF ALREADY!”)

Anyhow, I tried to remember as we ate that the family meal is a process, not an end. And that no one is the Cleavers.

Honestly, I really appreciate the reminders, and the pep talks. And the suggestions of choosing other meals to be family meals, like breakfasts (we do pretty well with breakfasts, actually. Maybe we’re morning people).

One thing that I realized while thinking about all of this is that I don’t enjoy eating when I’m feeling stressed out. I’ve got other issues, too — like, I can’t sit with my back to where waiters will pass frequently, I cannot stand being touched while I’m eating, and I get wacky about noise from TVs or radios while dining. Basically, I like to think of meal-time as relaxing times.

Which is why I’m thinking about becoming a hobbit.

Listen to this description of hobbits, from Wikipedia: “Hobbits enjoy at least seven meals a day, not including snacks, when they can get them - breakfast, (arguably) second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, tea, dinner and later, supper.”

I’m not fully kidding, actually. Though I’m about twice the size of your average hobbit, I rather like the idea of the dinner then supper, at least on the nights when the family dinner isn’t going so well. My family meal? Well, that will be dinner. But if the food starts flying, and the kids start wailing, I can just put my fork down and say to myself, “that’s okay, I can still have supper later, after they go to bed.” It’s an out.

I know, the purists among you are scoffing. Others of you are whistling, saying “Ooooh, you are gonna get faaaat…”

Which if you ask me will only make me look MORE like a hobbit.

Actually, I’ve got a pretty good start already, and not just because my toes sprout hairs. See? Here’s a hobbit:

And here’s me:

(I’m looking mighty pretty in that photo aren’t I? And I am looking quite hobbitish, if you ask me).

And speaking of hobbits…while I was looking for a photo of Frodo, I actually stumbled upon a very nice-lookin’ Middle Earth recipe for cheddar soup over at the Lord of the Ring’s Fan Club scrapbook (and, man, there are some devoted folks there hanging around that site. I’d say that they have waaaay too much time on their hands, but then again, I just took a photo of myself looking hobbit-like, so I will refrain from casting the first stone). It looks sooo simple, and mighty tasty.

Here’s the upshot: chop leeks, carrots, and onions, then sautee in butter for a couple of minutes. Add 6 cups veggie broth, a minced clove of garlic, and some thyme and sage, then boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Then blend, add a cup of milk and a quarter pound of cheddar, and serve. I’m guessing it’s 45 minutes, start-to-finish, most of which is simmering time.

It looks yummy, and it’s one-pot, and it’s going to be really, really good…both for my dinner AND my supper.

Cheers, friends.