Monthly Archives: November 2016

Roasted Red Pepper and Gouda Soup

27 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by in Biting and Drinking

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A Collaboration.

Basics by “The Café”

Finessing By Narcissa Lyons

This sounds like it might be a heavy soup, but isn’t.  The amount of cheese is minimal but adds a nice smokiness and texture.  It’s possible adding a dollop of sour cream to your portion might make it even better since sour cream invariably does.  Below serves roughly 4 hungry peeps.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon EVOO

1　onion chopped

2　carrots peeled and cut into small pieces

4-5　roasted red peppers, sliced*

4　cloves garlic minced

2　cans reduced sodium chicken broth (14.5 oz cans)

1 bunch fresh basil

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/2 cup smoked Gouda cheese shredded, plus some for garnish

Home-made garlic croutons**

Chopped bacon bits (optional)

Heat olive oil in a 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, 3 to 5 minutes. Add carrots, roasted red peppers, garlic, chicken broth and seasonings. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 25 to 30 minutes.

Remove from heat. Using either an immersion blender (love this thing) or a traditional blender, puree the soup.  Once pureed and at home in the saucepan again, add the cheese. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until cheese is melted.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with some of the shredded cheese, croutons & bacon bits.  Enjoy.

*If you haven’t roasted peppers before, it’s easy and they are very good to have around to toss into almost anything (pasta, sandwich, fantabulous on their own).  Plus you should do it any time you think your peppers might not be tasty raw any longer. Simply take 4-5 peppers or whatever depending on you, and slice off the sides, tossing the innards.  You do not have to wash since you’ll be peeling off the skin.  Place them on a cookie sheet, skin side up, and put under a high broil setting.  You want to take them out when the skin looks as below, approx. 10-15 minutes.  Once cooled off, peel the skin and discard the skin. It’s OK if you don’t get every last shred of charred skin since that adds to the flavor.  Layer the pieces of peppers in a wide cereal bowl ideally so that layers are: peppers/TBSP EVOO/salt to taste, peppers/EVOO,etc.  Each time you put the oil on, rub into the peppers so they all have the benefit.

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 **If you don’t have them or feel like making them, store bought will do the trick obviously.

Mettle to the Petal

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Crap Shoot

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By Narcissa Lyons

 

Might seem like blooms of all colors and scents (and sense) are too trivial to write about.  Please don’t stop reading, particularly if you are the more masculine portion of a relationship.  You need this the most.

Most women love flowers, but they really love receiving flowers from the person that in theory cares about them more than anyone else.  Life offers rare opportunities to really demonstrate affection easily enough, and the male gender has long been known to be just a little clueless on how to convey warmth to their partner.  This is the easiest and least expensive way to do it!  Possibly some of you are thinking “well actually it’s just as easy, inexpensive, and closer to go to the bedroom where affection can be shown”.  Sorry, doesn’t count, “try again later” in 8-ball language, since men would not live or live well without the physical piece of things and that sort of “gift” is at the very least a mutual one, if not a little more slanted to the males.

The provision of flowers does not require words.  This should be one of the most attractive aspects of flower giving to men given their also notorious loathing of talking about love, feelings, or really any subject of import that does not involve some kind of ball being batted around.  Pick them out, or let a clerk do it for you, purchase them and walk out confident you are doing something that will be well received, and THEN possibly get you to the bedroom for the rest of the “affection”.  A single flower can do the trick.  There is no requirement for a full bouquet.  Bringing in a single flower or a set of them means you thought about your other, that you paused from whatever daily grind you were a part, detoured, parked and bought something (or picked them in a field, even lovelier!) because the thought of her prompted you to.  That you think about her even when she isn’t there in front of you.  We assume you think about us in the first throes of romance, but as time wears on and the assumptions made by men that “of course you know I love you”, begin to do their own damage.  It isn’t that we don’t know you love us, because most of the time we do, but the passing of time does not mean there should be less affirmation of that love, of the knowledge we are being thought of.

Despite the fact most men look at women as enigmas, overly sensitive, hard to please, I won’t go on, we are not that complex.  Just more complex than men.  This is not an insult, but a partial explanation of why things can sometimes go awry when we try to deal with each other.  We tend to be deeper people and we do tend to over-think, but we also can’t help it.  Genetically wired.  This means we know the same is true for men, that men cannot help the way they are either.  It is for this reason I write this article.  Possibly my subject matter would be constant if all I did was write about men and what they do and what they don’t, but there I go digressing again.

I mean it about flowers.  I have been tongue in cheek so far, and I don’t want that to turn this into an inference that this is a light subject.  Letting your meaningful other know that you think of them enough to stop and pick some flowers for her, is a massively wonderful thing.  Don’t do it on obvious occasions when you are forced to think of her (Birthday, Valentine’s ,etc.).  Just do it any old time.  Maybe this will be difficult if you haven’t ever done it before, and maybe you fear she’ll immediately suspect you of guilt for bad behavior, but then you can explain it away.  You can let her know  that you read something that made you realize you should show her more often how you care about her.

It’s one of my favorite sights really, other than maybe getting my own flowers (which I don’t dear husband so pay attention).  I’m grocery shopping and heading towards checkout.  I see a man with a single bouquet of flowers in front of me or at another check-out, and I know he stopped at the store just for that.  I look at his face and study him for a little while, always smile, and am tempted most times to say something like a thank you for being that person, to let him know that he is being quite cool, to underscore and encourage this behavior.  I have not done so as yet, but now that I realize just how meaningful those scented petals are, I promise the next man I see with them I will do so.  “Good on you” or something like that.

On your way home tonight, just do it.  Then put reminders in your calendar to do it again in a month or so just because you can, because you love her, because you want to make her happy, and because she very much deserves them.

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