soup without vision

i was feeling kind of blah today after spending several hours in studio; not that many people were there and i missed my roommates, whom i haven't seen much of in the past week. since they weren't around, i decided i needed to cook. rather, to lovingly fashion some sort of food product; i've always found cooking to be therapeutic and this instance was no exception.

i didn't know what i was going to make, but celina was into the soup idea, so soup it was. we had red peppers and broccoli at home, and i thought i'd make something that i could put that in. when i cook for therapy, i like it to be a prolonged experience, so i can take my time. to me that means bacon and rendered bacon fat, or a roast chicken. i ended up making a soup with some stuff i thought might be good (but that i had no idea if it would be good): in addition to the peppers and broccoli i added some zucchini, portabella mushrooms, and sage.

it turned out pretty well. i also bought thick-cut bacon, which was an excellent addition; it was even slightly meatier than normal thick-cut bacon, but not quite canadian bacon or british bacon, so it was perfect for the soup. i cooked the bacon with sage to get some of the flavor into the bacon, then added a whole lot of (old, since they made me cry more than usual) onions to deglaze the pan. there's nothing like my all clad pan for utterly fantastic fond, by the way. other than the bacon, it was a basic soup: add onions, potatoes to thicken the soup (my favorite way to thicken soup), and extra veg. in the end, i wasn't sure how the mushrooms would go over; i thought of them as a meat "substitute" that would add body to the soup, but the more i thought about it, the more i thought it was a mistake. however, it ended up being ok - there were enough other vegetables to tame the strength of the portabellas.

last weekend carrien and i made these fantastic crepes for breakfast: cornmeal-cumin crepes that are filled with a ricotta-ham mixture and then baked, with a corn and scallion relish dealio. they were fantastic - the ricotta ham combo is not to be missed. we bought ham ends from star market because they were cheap, so to give them more flavor we fried the ham in some bacon fat (best thing in the world to cook with) and browned it a little, which to me, made all the difference. god those were good. i think i had more than my fair share of the leftovers.