Soup Day

 

Look what I got today! A box of books! Always exciting to hold the new book in my hands, and this one is special because I love the cover and because it takes me back to my Chicago childhood. No, I’m not selling books out of the trunk of my car. I’m asking friends to order from Amazon; these carefully counted out copies are for my immediate family, reviewers, and people who helped me get the book from manuscript to print.

Today's weather: It’s not chilly, except when you’ve been having days in the nineties, a high in the low seventies—and low sixties at night—seems chilly. Add to it the slow, steady drizzle that we’re having today, and you know fall is here.

First thing this morning, I put a chicken carcass on to simmer. Then I did what I’ve been itching to do for a couple of weeks—fished all those icebox dishes out of the freezer and let them defrost so I could tell what was what. (Jacob hates for me to call them icebox dishes—he thinks it’s an old-fashioned term and says, “Containers, Juju, containers!) I had a total of eight—returned two to the freezer because they didn’t fit the emerging “theme” of my soup, discarded one because I couldn’t tell what it was, dumped four into the soup just now, and am still waiting to identify one. The soup turned out to be a chicken soup, with the meat I scrounged from the carcass before I put it on to simmer.

When I asked Christian, days ago, if he’d eat “soup of the week” or “freezer soup,” he said he’d have to know what was in it—sometimes I think that boy needs more sense of adventure. At any rate, I promised yesterday I would not consciously put in anything he doesn’t eat. We’ll see how it goes over tonight. With garlic knots (left from our last spaghetti-to-go order) and Caesar salad—we are all now enamored of Samin Nostrad’s Caesar dressing. It has mayonnaise, which is a no-no in traditional Caesar dressings, but it makes generous use of the anchovies which give the dressing its characteristic flavor. So good!

On the writing front, I had one of those panicky moments today that every writer hates. I couldn’t find the 450 words I wrote one day last week. They weren’t brilliant words, not near my best, but they were words I needed in the only remaining “lecture” for my online class. I had five different files with the title I thought should be on those words. And each of them was an abbreviated set of notes, nothing worked out in words. Just as I began to reassemble the notes so I could figure out what I said, I found the copy. So now I’ve added another 400 words. Tomorrow will try to whip it into a cohesive article. Also discovered that for my Dropbox backup I had the same lecture twice, which would have left me one short. Got that straightened out too. Somehow this online class looms big on my mind.

PS: The soup was good. Christian admitted, “Jacob and I were skeptical, but you did a good job.” High praise! Should have taken a picture, but I ended adding egg noodles, corn, and diced tomatoes to my leftovers. So good—and not much leftover.