Is it soup yet?

Okay, so... I know two blogs in one day seems a little weird, but the soup. It was... Oh my.

Mistress almost threatened me when I mentioned vaguely that I might not remember how to make it again. The eyebrow arching I received nearly stung, and thus I decided I must at least tell a brief tale of The Soup.

I was shopping before the snow got really crazy, and I stumbled on these adorable little dried cheese tortellini and ravioli in the bulk foods at my local grocery. When I cook, I tend to grab what looks good and then go from there. It's rare for me to use an actual recipe, but I knew I wanted to make a soup. Or a risotto. Or something. Some mushrooms looked promising, but so did those huge blocks of dark chocolate.

Today after my appointment I stopped at a different grocer to pick up... Actually, I can't remember what I originally went there for. The point is, I was wandering down the meat isle, mentally rejecting shrimp (obviously long frozen), pork (just not right for the risotto) and various other hunks-o-critter until I saw it. Good old, standard kielbasa. Instantly warm memories from winters past floated into my mind. My mom was quite fond of making it with sauer kraut on snowy days like this. As today has been the very definition of winter, I snatched up two packages and swore to figure something out. I'd been thinking of making a big pot of something minestrone-like, so I grabbed a few cans of diced tomatoes and some kidney beans.

After finishing productions on the fig compote portion of my tarte, I set to on the soup. The sausage got sliced, browned, removed and the rendered fat used to caramelize the onions. Next it was celery and the cans of tomato so the liquid could be used to remove the browned bits at the bottom of the pan. Yummy little golden brown scrapings of happiness! This was shaping up nicely. Next in was chicken broth and some palm-fulls of herbs; oregano, thyme and rosemary and the sausage was returned so that everybody could mingle and talk to each other.

I like to think of soup like a party of sorts... A pool party if you will. Everybody hops in the water together and, if you provide the right social lubricants, gets to know each other. They share ideas. Everybody starts to rub off on each other, and before you know it you've got one big happy group of people who, while they still are who they are, are more than they were before this fabulous little get-together enhanced their evening.

With soup, a good soup, there's a moment when everything has melded perfectly and you can stop asking, "Is it soup yet?" and instead proclaim proudly, "Toast the garlic boule, we're going to need something appropriate for sopping!"

I let the party get moving in the pot and turned my attention to the tarte anticipating great things. Sadly, when I returned for tasting 30 minutes later something was... I don't know. Missing. I contemplated adding wine, but that seemed a little too minestrone like, and I'd purposefully elected to not involve beans in this party. You know how kielbasa and beans are when they get together. Everyone has a very "talkative" tummy the next day, and I'm quite certain the co-workers I'll be locked in a room with for 10 plus hours tomorrow wouldn't appreciate that.

No, wine wasn't right. But I DID happen to have several bottles of beer sitting on the counter glancing sheepishly at me. This wasn't cheap, run of the mill lager. This was the good stuff, Blue Moon. Well, at least it was moderately priced and tasty stuff. Everybody knows about kielbasa and beer. They have a history. They belong together. Who was I to separate the two? Plus I knew that Kielbasa was basically the hot chick at the party that everybody was trying to hook up with. This could add some interest in the sort of way that only meeting up with an old flame can.

After adding one bottle and tasting I decided a second would complete the holy covenant herein being formed.

And so it did.

The broth was smoky and salty and malty all at once, with a hint of sweetness from the tomatoes and caramelized onion. I decided it was time to bring the tortellini into it and give everybody some alone time. It was turning into one of those kinds of parties. You know, the ones where the picture taking abruptly stops and people start going au naturale. Maybe there's a little hanky panky going on in the hot tub. I wasn't comfortable interrupting, and besides, I blush easily.

Once everybody had calmed down and had their cigarettes, my roomie and I dug in and OH how things had developed! You could barely tell where one flavor ended and the other began... and the beer had infused everything through-out with it's delightful, high quality boozey-ness. My bread thanked me as I dunked it in to soak up all that love-juice...

Wow. I think I just cheapened my own soup. Glad I thought of that analogy after the fact.

In any case, now the tale of The Soup is chronicled and I can look forward to the fig tarte. I'm not sure if it will deserve capitalization like our sausagey friend did, but one can hope, can't we? I totally winged the mascarpone filling so we'll see if I got the chemical makeup right.

**NOTE** yeah... I didn't get the makeup right. Ah, well. Maybe another day.

Cross your fingers and until next time, keep those two off of each other. They're like a couple of dogs in heat when they get together.

For the love of god, just stay HOME people!

So, I don't know if you've noticed, but it's snowing.

A lot.

I realize that it's not snowing on all of you, mind. I'm just saying that here? In my little northwesterly portion of the county? It is SNOWING. At rates as much as an inch or more an hour. At the right is what my front yard looked like last night at about 5 p.m. I had an appointment this morning at 8 a.m. It was humorous enough to swipe 4 inches of snow off my car, which I had driven home only the night before. It was quite another thing to wipe another 1.5 to 2 inches off of it again when I was done with said appointment exactly one hour later. Below is what my place looked like at about 9:30 a.m. Notice my neighbor's busted ass car is almost entirely buried.

When I came home, I got my ass to shoveling.

Oddly enough, it made me feel sort of giddy. We haven't had many years of this magnitude in my lifetime. The last one was in '97 the year before I went to college and the only one that comes close in my memory would be the winter of '85-'86. Now that was a winter! The snow actually accumulated up over the heighth of our chain link fence and my little 5 year old self had the time of her life creating a vast network of tunnels in our front yard. These tunnels became so sacred to me that I refused to make snow angels in our own yard for fear of destroying them. Fortunately we had elderly neighbors who were more than happy to let me angel up their front yard so long as I didn't push snow onto their shoveled front walk.

And speaking of shoveling... I've never been a fan, however the beauty and excitement of our new winter wonder land had energized me and I went to with a will. I was particularly enamoured of the bush in our front yard. There's a bunny who has his burrow somewhere in its base. His name is Bob, by the way. Every now and then I see Bob's prints meandering across the lawn. I hope he's not stuck in there now, or that he at least has enough food to last him, because I don't think he's getting out of there any time soon.

By the way, I paused in front of the bush and contemplated the snowy avalanche I would be rewarded with if I tried to shovel under the weighed down branches and decided to be lazy and let it go. My neighbors hadn't shoveled their walk yet so I figured apathy would beget apathy on this one.

Let me just say this to anybody here who might be considering driving somwhere - If you feel you absolutely have to, please please please be aware of where you are. Look for mile posts and crossroads and know the name of the road you're on. Seriously. If you don't know where you are then the ambulance won't know where you are.

The roads have steadily been closed down over the past few days in the area and, being a planner type as well as working with the public, I knew it might be a good idea to stock up on essentials. Therefore, here I am in my warm, cozy apartment with nothing but my room-mate, a pantry full of cooking options and two (!) seasons of law and order SVU to watch.

I smell a cooking spree, don't you?

I've had this idea for a fig and mascarpone tart since Thanksgiving. I was particuarly ambitious this year since it was my first time hosting and I made 4 different kinds of baklava: pecan, walnut, almond and cashew. It was not only my first time making baklava, something I'd seen done many times before and always wanted to try, but also my first shot at working with phyllo. The dough had been on sale, so I stocked up on it. Though the resulting baklava was delicious, I kind of ended up baklava-ed out, so the dough has been sitting in my freezer awaiting a project of some kind.

And this is it - step one is making a compote of sort out of dried mission figs. I'm adding a lot of lemon zest and juice so the fruit portion will be nice and tart to contrast the richness of the mascarpone cream and butteriness of the phyllo. By the way, I'm quite adamant about using lemon zest. In my opinion there's hardly a recipe calling for lemon juice that couldn't benefit from running the lemon over the fine side of cheese grater. In addition, the picture illustrates one of my more favored tricks - when you juice the lemon lay your grater over the bowl so it catches the seeds. Look at that! You crazy multi-tasker, you!

Take note the of the catch phrase on the fig bag. I wasn't aware that I was also purchasing a pouch full of irony along with my dried fruits. Oh maiden of the dried grape, how you mock me. Fortunately I'm going to have a nice slice of consolation shortly.

Also to be made today - kielbasa and tortellini soup. Care to join me? Just make sure you don't have to drive too far to get here.

And so...

You know, I'm no stranger to blogging. I got into it way back in '01, when the concept was hip and fresh. The thing all the kids were doing, not to mention all the indie hipster twenty-somethings. Some of them have continued on, building the blog-o-sphere word by word, phrase by phrase into something real and tangible.

Don't get me wrong, I don't for a second believe that what is written by faithful bloggers out here in the ether of our world is on the lips of citizens of our global village every day by the watering hole in the same way as say... I don't know... Well, I would say that episode of Desperate House Wives that was on last night, but the writer's strike has screwed even that up, hasn't it? What we write here, what we pour out of our brains for naked inspection by anyone with an internet connection and the ability to google our especial brands of sarcasm or wit, is each our own part of a collective world view.

I don't know about you (and odds are, if you're reading this you blog too. That's kind of how the community works, isn't it?) but I blog because I just want to put it all down so things will make sense. Sometimes that "sense" is so I can get the wording right on something funny that happened to me and therefore tell a more effective anecdote on a girls night out. More often than not, though, it's more literal than that. The last year of my life have been bar none the most trying of my somewhat young life. I haven't written, truly written, since before this whole mess started last spring, and I wonder if that hasn't slowed down my recovery.

"But what whole mess?" you might say. "Jesus, if this bitch is going all cryptic this soon into it, I'm outtie."

Clearly you are a reader of discerning taste. To this I say, all in good time. For right now, I'm tired of being serious. I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime. Or at least until I can put all of this mostly behind me.

---

On a lighter note, I got to see my man over last weekend.

Hmm... Wait, y'all have no blessed clue about my love life yet. Okay, here's the quick and dirty he-said she-said version of my relationship with the Beard.

Angstia: Nice profile. I also like zombies.
Beard: What a coincidence. Let's play Literati on yahoo so I can assess whether or not you're dumb.
Angstia: I like that plan for the same reason you put forward.
Beard: Your emails are well written and interesting.
Angstia: I noticed you're not commenting on me kicking your ass multiple times. You clearly have tact. Let's talk on the phone.
Beard: Wow, you don't sound like be Arthur at all. Large boobs you say?
Angstia: Very.
Beard: Yes, well, let's meet
Angstia: You're tall and have a voice low enough to rival Ving Rhames? Bring it.

At the in person meeting

Angstia: You're way hotter than I thought
Beard: So are you
they make out
Beard: Wanna be my girlfriend?
Angstia: Yeah, wanna be by boyfriend?
Beard: Word. Let's watch a crappy teen movie and then have sex for the first time.
Angstia: Sounds like a plan.

Some time later

Beard: I love you.
Angstia: I love you too. Especially when you do that.
Beard: Oh, sorry. It helps me think.
Angstia: It sucks that we live so far apart.
Beard: I'd walk the 300 miles if I had to to get to you.
Angstia: How long until you finish school?
Beard: 1 year.
Angstia: You do realize you'll be my sex slave thereafter, right?
Beard: Can I?
Angstia: MAY you.
Beard: Exactly.

And that pretty much brings you up to date. We're sitting at about 5 months now and are just waiting on him finishing school so he can move over here and we can start our life together. He comes over here more than I go over there, which I'm trying to remedy. His schedule is just more flexible than mine, though. I have the kind of job you can't call in sick for when you want a "mental health" day because it's the kind of job you can't just run short staffed on. People could, quite literally, die because you wanted to stay home and watch The Holiday while you painted your toes and ate cookie dough.

Not that I've done that. I'm just taking creative license.

In any case, he's got that lovely school pace of life, with regular breaks for holidays and the end of semester. I swear, if I ever got an entire month off of work, I'd seriously worry about my ability to do my job when I got back. Luckily I was able to finagle shift trades with my co-workers for the time he was in town for Martin Luther King Jr. Day so I could spend the entire time with him.

When Beard comes to visit, it's like time suspends itself. I don't worry about work, or whether or not my co-workers like me. I don't worry about laundry or dishes or bills or any of the myriad things I busy myself with in day to day life. I just revel in the feeling of his huge, strong arms wrapped around me in a bone-cracking hug the moment he first walks through the door. The look of relief that shines from his face when he realizes he's here and the next however long will be occupied with us and only us. The smell of his skin when we're curled up to go to bed and my face is nuzzled into his chest, the hairs tickling my nose and the faint scent of his soap and his own natural musk.

Are you barfing yet? Really? You should be. My friends would be irritated if we weren't so damned cute together. All of my friends, and I mean ALL of them, genuinely like him. This is a far cry from my usual pattern:

Angstia: Mistress, Boss Lady, I'd like you to meet AssholeICan'tBelieveIWasEngaged to.
Mistress & Boss Lady: Hi Rick.
Rick: So uh... You guys aren't feminists, are you? All feminists are lesbians.
Mistress & Boss Lady: ... Uh...
Angstia: Ha! Isn't he funny? Don't mind him he's just kidding.
Rick: Yeah. Kidding. Anyway, lesbians are just pale shadows of men. You know, hot to trot but you've still got to squat, I always say. They can't drive either.
Angstia: Okay, now you're kind of embarassing me, honey.
Rick: What? It's funny when Carlos Mencia does it.
Mistress & Boss Lady: ...
Angstia: Soo... Want to see my ring? *nervous laugh*

---

And now that I mention dishes, I've need to get my shit together. My roomie's boyfriend, who is also long-distance if you can handle THAT coincidence, will be visiting this weekend and I'd like for it to not be a sty when he arrives.

~Angstia