QT 90 – Soups for Snowy Season

Why hello there, and welcome one and all back to Kitchen Catastrophes, where I am in the middle of making a bad call. I’m your erroneous Referee, Jon O’Guin, and I am about to try and buy myself time with a method I KNOW doesn’t work.

See, the thing is that, since I’m in Leavenworth working the Christmas Tree Lighting Season, my schedule is kinda wonky compared to normal, and it’s changed my mental state. Not like, dropping me into depression or anything, but rather the simple fact of having to calibrate and change-up how I do stuff. Like, my days off change, my evening schedule changes, my social calendar, all of it. So trying to juggle all that takes a bit, and I (at least) ended up in a position where I made Monday’s post, and had no idea what to do today. I momentarily considered covering like, a Netflix show or movie, but just felt it was too soon : we covered the Mouse on the Mayflower TWO WEEKS ago.

Oh, your time will come.

Then I reflected, and realized that there’s one good connection between me being in Leavenworth and the season as a whole: Soup. When I’m in Leavenworth, I tend to eat a lot more soup, because I’m on a budget, and it’s a meal I can buy for $2 a can. And it even connects to Monday’s post, since it was a kind of stew! Hell, I haven’t eaten lunch yet because I can’t bring myself to clean the bowls necessary to make a thing of Soup at the moment.

Jon’s current sloth level: willing to take, and edit, a picture of bowls, but unwilling to clean them.

“So,” I said, out loud despite being alone, and startling the cats who had mostly forgotten I was still here. “Why don’t we just do a post about Soups? We’re not feeling like an in-depth topic, and we can just link a bunch of older posts, so people remember all the good soup recipes we’ve made, as well as that one that no one knows if it’s good or not, because no one ate it.” Which sounds like a fun, easy way to patch up a whole and take an easy day…but I KNOW that’s untrue. Because the LAST time I made a Link-heavy post, people joked it must have been easy for weeks, but it actually took LONGER than most posts, because A: I have to open up a shit-ton of tabs and physically make the links, and also because that post is just as long as other posts!

But where would we as a Catastrophe be if we LEARNED from our bad decisions? SO LET’S DIVE INTO A SERIOUS SERVING OF SOUPS.

Alright, a quick look over the site tells me I’ve made 17 Soups over the course of this site, counting Monday’s post, and the aforementioned broccogus catastrophe. So let’s quickly cut through each of them! A Soup-Restrospective!

KC 16 – CHICKEN KHAO SOI – Since I made this recipe, I have eaten various Khao Soi (Khao Sois? Khaos Soi?) but I have not MADE any more of it. That’s probably at least in part because A: Like a shark, I can only keep moving forward, and B: because I don’t want to make the spice paste again. I’ve read a couple recipes that use Red Curry Paste as a base, which hooks up nicely with Monday’s chili, if you need justification to buy a bottle.

KC 34 – FEIJOADA – Man, remember when the Olympics were in Brazil? That feels like DECADES ago. Of the three Brazil recipes I made, I think this was the closest to being “on point”. I really did like the weird topping agent of fresh-squeezed orange over a heavily porky stew.

KC 88 – SOPA DE AJO – I have definitely remade Sopa de Ajo since I wrote this post. Only once or twice, but seriously, revisiting recipes I make on the site is somewhat rare, so it’s a high honor. And every time I’m REMINDED of the soup, I really consider making it again. I think the big reason I haven’t is because I’d want to do it with some kind of fancy ham.

KC 100- Cioppino – This dish was okay, and I’m getting better at eating clams/mussels, but I am still not excited to try it again. Which sucks, because I definitely have like, a 1 pound slab of cioppino base sitting in my freezer. It would technically be on brand for like, an Italian-themed Christmas dinner.

KC 134 – Red Grape Gazpacho – The dish is fine, but I really wouldn’t recommend a cold grape soup in December except as like, a weird opener to some kind of fancy dinner.

KC 139 – Yellow Mustard Noodle Bowl – I’d honestly consider this a riff on Chicken Noodle Soup, and I think it’d be something interesting for a January meal or something: it’s a little thinner and sparser, but it feels warming and interesting.

KC 144 – Veggie Harvest Minestrone – Have I used my Instant pot again since this recipe? I feel like the answer has to be yes, but I haven’t posted anything. Joe just used one to make a 4 pepper curry. Maybe I could bully him into writing up the recipe…

KC 147 – Garlic Broth and Stracciatella – I definitely made this at least twice after this recipe, using Chicken broth rather than making another batch of Garlic. I remember that one of the times, I forgot to wash the kale/spinach, and let me tell you, a thin brothy soup with gritty sand is not a good mix.

KC 149 – Maafe - Man, this was a tightly packed series of soups. Look at that. 4 out of the last 10 weeks have been soup based. I still get Maafe when we go to Central Market, which tends to be after a trip to Finnriver.

KC 152 – Vichysoisse – Look, I like loaded baked potato soup. I liked this. It’s not hard science, nor was it a hard recipe.

KC 157 – Home-made Miso Soup – One of the frustrating things about Miso Soup is whenever I remember it, I’m like “oh, yeah, I could just HAVE THAT, like, WHENEVER” ever since I bought that bag of wakame. And yet I continue to not. I blame the light burning

KC 159 – Irish Skink Soup – Do you want Chicken Noodle soup with cream, and lettuce instead of noodles? It’s actually pretty okay, but it’s also pretty fucking weird.

KC 175 – Red Lentil Soup – I still have that bag of dried Red Lentils, and I think this is a nice time of year for it. I should see about making a hotter/smokier version.

KC 188 – Brown Ale Butternut Squash Soup – Thick, warm, easily made vegan/vegetarian. This was a solid soup.

Man LOOK at all those links. SO many possible soups, with so little said about them here. Though, seriously, just reminding myself of a couple of them does have me thinking on whether I want to try making some. I have an instant miso soup mix here, as well as a tub of Red Miso…

MONDAY: JON TACKLES THREE SOFT BOYS TO MAKE ONE SWEET SUCCESS.

THURSDAY: HE iS TEETERING ON THE EDGE OF A BREAKDOWN, YOU MONSTERS. WE’LL GET TO IT WHEN WE GET TO IT.