Food for the Soul

We painted these bowls a few weeks ago at All Fired Up, and this may have been my inspiration for getting back into the kitchen.

They seemed to scream function rather than form. A bit too big for ice cream...so I thought soup. Years ago (maybe 2005) I made soups...mostly seafood - red, cream, broth, etc. Then I stopped, suddenly...just like I stopped making cakes, etc.

Every winter my daughter asks for soups, and it never seems to happen. But these bowls needed something for function. So I made soup - 3 times this week.

My biggest problem is that I can never make the same thing twice...why because I experiment AND because I never write recipes down. This pisses people off. And it's quite frustrating for me.

I made a salmon stew Monday night (Yom Kippur for some people) and it was pretty tasty. On Thursday I had a friend over for a working lunch, I was too tickled that I was being hospitable with my fawla; then I decided to prepare the stew again for her (it was totally different this time). I guess I got on a roll because I decided to make a beef stew last night, which was to be our food for today. It was my first time using parsnips (I think I "discovered" them while reading Julie and Julia).

Tomorrow there will be no soup. ..I have a baked ziti in the freezer that I prepared last week (actually I made 2 last week when I got carried away with the pasta sauce I was making - that I will likely not be able to recreate).

I've gotten so jazzed that I've gone as far as sending out an email to my extended family for First Sunday family dinners. Let's see what comes of that.