I Made Ugly Soup! or "Close Your Eyes and Think of England" Chowder

My husband, Dr. Smartypantz, let me know today that he doesn't actually like leeks all that much.

And I was all, "WHAT? But... you brag about my potato-leek soup to people!
And he said, "Yeah. Well, I like it without leeks, actually."

Ok, then.

So I had some really nice ingredients that all needed a cuddle, gastronomically-speaking.
(I feel like a cross between a bad Harlequin novel and Iron Chef right about now.)

The list:

One adorable little squash. 

I KNOW! It's like if Pilgrims designed a Dreidel!

And I had some lovely, fresh  leeks

and 

Some wilty baby spinach, some wilty cilantro, and some hairy carrots.  (You know, when you find them behind the lettuce and they've gotten all these weird tendrils of what is certainly the carrot equivalent of old-man-ear-hair?)

Oh, and some forgotten lettuce.Which had been hiding the ear-hair carrots.

I stabbed the adorable little Dreidel-squash a few times and put it in a pyrex dish at 350 F for a while.  About 20 minutes?  Nothing much seemed to be happening, so I grabbed my biggest, baddest hatchet-like knife and chopped it in two.  Cleaved it, as it were.  And I disemboweled it. Plopped it back into the dish and back into the oven.  And pronptly forgot about it. 

We'll say I chose to carmelize it.

[BTW: blogger chooses NOT to recognize the word "Dreidel" but thinks that "pronptly" is fine.]

I had my daughter clean the leeks (which I had halved and cut the green parts from) in a sink of water.  In a big ol' pot, I melted a little butter and then tossed in the leeks.  (I had her take a scissor to them while they were floating in the water, so they were roughly chopped).

Let the leeks sautee a bit, and added 2 sliced carrots.  

I chopped up the spinach, cilantro, and some lettuce together and added to the pot after maybe 5 minutes.  Kept the heat pretty high because there was a lot of steaming going on.

I peeled and crushed a couple cloves of garlic too, and added them.  

I was going to add a few cups of chicken broth, but SHIZNIT, no broth.  So I added water.

POOF!  Lots of steam.  Mama's facial, I like to call it.

Cookcookcook. Let the girl-child stir, as it would do absolutely no harm.

Now, at this point, I went, OMG! THE SQUASH!

And I pulled it out of the oven, noting the gorgeous carmelization that was totally on purpose.

Now here's where I went off the rails, recipe-wise.  

I should have strained all the veggies out of the well-cooked broth.  I was going to.  I had EVERY INTENTION of doing that.  And then I looked at all those hard-working leeks, all those sad, ignored carrots, and I couldn't bring myself to do it.  It seemed like senseless, wasteful veggiecide.

I wanted their demise to HAVE MEANING.  

So I pureed them. 

I wanted all that fibery goodness.  

It looked weird. Verrry greeny-orangey weird.  (Remember the carrots? It's all their fault.)

So at that point, I figured, "What the heck," so I scooped out the squash innards and added THEM to the soup and pureed IT.

And now it's an unappetizing green/orange slick.  I closed my eyes and thought of England, and tasted it.

WHOA.  How is it possible that something so intensely UGLY could be so good?  It's like finding out that the ugly nose-picking guy next to you in junior high gym class grew up to have a spectacular body and an M.D..  It's just not right. You can appreciate it, but still....

I salted to taste, added some half-and-half, stirred, and took another 'think of England' taste.  I took one for the team.

Again, WHOA.  Even better.  So now, all I have to do is find a way to make it not so "Exorcist"-looking.  Maybe a big pile of chopped tomatoes, some  big garnishes of cilantro leaves?  A BIG HAT AND SUNGLASSES?

So there you have Ugly soup.  Or "Close Your Eyes and Think of England" Chowder.

Two Evil Sisters

I was just reading an amazing post by Caro at
http://helpmeorillkickyou.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/i-remember-me/

It caused me to begin to ramble in a comment there, and I got a grip on myself, and said I'd continue here.

Here is part of my comment:

• I’ll try to pull it together for a moment. I HATE HATE Selective Ignorance (let’s call it SI). Also Deliberate Naivety, her prim, passive-aggressive stepsister. HATES them. So very many wrongs are committed by them. 

 

In Caro's case, she's referring to eating meat.  The fact that up until now, she has ignored what happens (the inhumane treatment of animals, the slaughter, and so on) so that she can eat meat.

Now, I'm no vegetarian.  (But after seeing the picture of the most adorable piglet EVER on her blog, it makes me wish I had the necessary gumption).  But.

I DO HATE Selective Ignorance and Deliberate Naivety.

So many people put on the cheap blonde wigs of S.I. and D.N. and do terrible, stupid, unkind, thoughtless things.  "What?  Nobody TOLD me that I was supposed to put oil in the car!" "How was I supposed to know that by drinking the entire last 1/4 of a gallon of milk, nobody else would get any?"
"No, I had no IDEA that my next-door neighbor needed help raking her lawn.  She's only 98! Perfectly healthy!"
"Well, I'm sure someone is working to solve that pesky climate change issue.  If it is real."

Selective ignorance occurs on large and small scales, from "don't know how to load the dishwasher" to "Genital mutilation? It's a myth, and if it exists, it's cultural!"

Deliberate Naivety is more subtle.  I see it a lot in women of a certain age who act like they are completely incapable of handling any thought or decision-making outside the scope of their own home.  "Oh, politics?  Too complicated for me.  I just vote like my husband does."  Or, "I only read books from the 'Christian Fiction' section.  I don't want to risk running into (whispering) sex scenes."

A lot of children and young adults exhibit this too.  In combination with S.I., you will see evidence of this when a high schooler is asked a question, say, in History class, and they claim to never have heard of something.  However, that very thing was covered in English class and in Science.  But they don't seem to realize that it's ok to integrate their knowledge.

What can we do?

I tend to challenge these kids directly.  "Really?  Are you quite sure you don't know?  I'll bet you can figure it out. Think again!"
The adults I tend to dismiss.  If a person is choosing to close their mental eyes, to stick their head under the sand of stupid, there's not much I can think of to say.  If I encourage them to think harder, to make their own decisions, it often comes off as me challenging their beliefs.  If I act skeptical that they really don't know something, it is condescending and rude. 

Honestly, I tend to just smile, raise my eyebrows, pick up my drink and head for the next person over.

I don't mean to be superior.  I don't want to be.  But I just don't know how to rise above, here.

Five Unfortunately/Fortunatelys

1:  Unfortunately, the fire in the fireplace is dying because I don't want to get up and stoke it.// Fortunately, at the precise moment I typed that, my husband made me get up and do it (it was my turn), so it's now crackling merrily.

2:  Unfortunately, I have to do a concert that I really kind of don't want to do this afternoon. // Fortunately, it'll make people see that I actually DO some of the things I say I'm going to do.

3:  Unfortunately, after the concert, we're taking my son and his 3 best buddies to Chuck E. Cheez for his 8th birthday.  // Fortunately, they now serve WINE.

4:  Unfortunately, the soles of my feet and my heels resemble those of a person who had been lost in a rocky desert, barefoot. // Fortunately, all those calluses makes it easier on me when I go outside in the mornings to get the newspaper, and there is lots of frost on the grass.

5:  Unfortunately, I forgot (while de-decorating from Halloween) to put away the dancing, singing vampire decoration thingy that has been on my mantel for a few weeks.  // Fortunately, .... hm.  I'll just dress him up like a pilgrim for Thanksgiving?