Pea Soup Memories

We lived for four years in College Park, Maryland when our kids were both in elementary school. I left at 7:00 a.m. every morning for my job in Washington, D.C. and returned just before six in the evening.

One evening our daughter met me at the door with a dreaded handout from school.

"Tonight's Medieval Night. We have to bring pea soup and we have to have costumes."

I don't remember why I was given such short notice, I just remember that my desperate "My kids will not suffer just because I work full-time" mom gene kicked in. I had exactly forty-five minutes before we had to leave for school. I took a couple of worn-out t-shirts, turned them wrong side out, cut out the sleeves, slit the front neck about six inches, poked holes on either side of the slit and laced seam binding through the holes. The kids slipped them on over their clothes, and voila! medieval costumes.

With a half hour to go, I took one look at the pea soup recipe and saw that it just wouldn't do (back in the Middle Ages they made stuff from scratch). There were three or four cans of Green Giant peas in the cabinet. I dumped all four of them in a bowl, mashed them with the potato masher, added a cube of bouillon and a lot of water, heated it up and voila! pea soup. DD looked at it doubtfully. DS was in first grade and couldn't care less (he would have been happy to stay home and play Freddie Fish on the computer), but we had pea soup.

"Where's your costume?" darling daughter asked, by this time a little awed, I think, and just throwing in things to test me.

With fifteen minutes to spare, I raided my collection of clothes from Africa and came up with a white cotton gauze number with a long skirt and fancy embroidery. I bet they were wearing these things in Ethiopia in the Middle Ages. Anyway, I put it on and off we went to medieval night. No one was any the wiser. I might have confessed to one of the friendlier parents at this tony private school that the pea soup was not made exactly according to the recipe, but the main point of this story is, Super Mom rode to the rescue on her white horse. Again. Oh, wait a minute, that's not the point of this story. The point is, I learned something about pea soup. That last-minute concoction was actually pretty tasty.

Fast forward five years or so. On one of our many trips to the Hoosier state from overseas, I got a cookbook from my mother. It was a simple affair, with colored paper pages and comb binding, called "Skinny Cooks Can't Be Trusted," by a fellow named Dave Kessler. I added it to my cookbook collection, and the first thing I remember trying is a recipe called "All American Split Pea Soup." This recipe marks the beginning of my like affair with real homemade pea soup, not exactly the way it was made in the Middle Ages, but close.

Still, Dave's recipe needed some tweaking. For one thing, you know how I hate recipes that use ALMOST the whole package but not the whole package. Dave's recipe also calls for a whole stick of butter, when a half or three-quarters will work just as well, and a whopping four cups of milk. DH doesn't care for cream soups, so over time I have reduced the milk incrementally, until yesterday when I did away with it altogether. So, with all due respect to Dave Kessler, here's my version of this recipe, perfect for snow days:

Not Exactly Medieval Split Pea Soup

1 package green split peas
One box of chicken broth
As much garlic as you can stand (I use a clove or two)
One large onion, or two small ones if you like onions
Five or six carrots, or more if you like carrots, chopped into 1/4" pieces
Whatever celery you have wilting in your fridge, up to and including the whole package, chopped into somewhat larger pieces
Six potatoes, peeled and cubed
One-half to a whole stick of butter, depending on how much fat you want clogging your arteries and how much it takes to saute the carrots and celery
1 can cream of chicken soup, or you could probably leave this out and be just as happy
A package of Kielbasa sausage, sliced about 1/4" thick
Salt and pepper

Wash the split peas, then cook them in a big soup pot with the broth, garlic, onion and as much water as you think it needs. About forty minutes into the cooking, boil the potatoes in a separate pot and mash them up AND saute the carrots and celery in the butter. When the split peas have cooked about an hour and more or less dissolved, add all the other ingredients to them. Keep the pot on low heat for a while to coax the juices out of the kielbasa, stirring frequently so you don't end up with burned peas on the bottom of your soup pot. If you're really feeling like Supermom, whip up a batch of cornbread to have with it.

Yummy, filling and nutrient-rich, even if you do use up a lot of dishes to make it.

Recipe Report - Super Bowls

I read somewhere that the reason the Italians traditionally eat lentils on New Year's Day is that lentils look like little coins, and eating them on New Year's Day guarantees an ample supply of money throughout the year. I'm not that superstitious, but I like even the most flimsily-supported traditions, and the Better Homes & Gardens recipe report is rapidly becoming one as well, so for today's New Year's dinner I prepared a lentil recipe from page 102 of the January 2011 BHG magazine, called Chunky Vegetable-Lentil Soup.

I immediately became disenchanted with the recipe because it called for one cup of lentils. Give me a break. Lentils come in a bag. Who cooks a single cup? I ignored this part of the directions and put the whole bag in, then compensated with an extra can of vegetable broth. The weirdest thing about this recipe was the pound of mushrooms it called for. Mushrooms and lentils are not an obvious marriage, kind of like Michael Jackson and Lisa-Marie Presley. I mean, really! Anyway, I dutifully cut the mushrooms into quarters, since I couldn't find any small ones, and followed the recipe as faithfully as possible. It called for a cabbage garnish, but my hungry teenage son came down to the kitchen near the end of the cooking and nixed the idea of topping the lentil soup with anything remotely smelling of cabbage, so in the end I served it unadorned with a side of cornbread.

The verdict? Edible. Probably very nutritious. Not terribly interesting. I forgot to take a picture, but it looked pretty much like the photo from the magazine, with more lentils and without the garnish. The mushrooms were still pretty firm and their flavor didn't seem to jell with anything else in the soup (lentils, carrots, celery, onions and garlic). If I ever make this again, and I'm not saying I will, I think I would slice the mushrooms thin and brown them in the olive oil at the beginning with the onions and the garlic. I'll probably just go back to my regular Hoppin' John recipe for future New Year's dinners, but who knows? Maybe next year BHG will have a recipe for lentils with peanut butter or something really yummy.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

DD finally made it home from college, and we all had a great time today trimming the tree and putting up decorations all over the house. I love our mantle. I piled all the extra lights that still worked even halfway in a big jumble and then added the stockings and other miscellaneous decorations and voila! there you go.

DD is going to help me fit the back of that jacket and then I can do as you suggested, Angela, and finish the thing and get on with my life. My daughter and I have big plans for this vacation to revisit some other projects. There are any number of them waiting for us, so we'll see what comes out of this midwinter blitz.

Polyester? Nein, Danke!

Some time back, I bought some chunky variegated teal yarn on sale from In a Yarn Basket in Bloomington. (You can read about it somewhere in the blog archives, if you really want to know the details!) Teal is one of my favorite colors, and I thought I would try designing my own sweater. I started out knitting from the bottom up in one piece. The first time it came out way too big, so I unraveled my work and started again. About a year ago I got the sweater to the point where it became obvious that there was not enough yarn to make sleeves. I decided to sew something long-sleeved to go under it, and my mom and I went to a nearby Jo-Ann Fabrics to see what we could find.

I ended up buying the embroidered polyester suede-like fabric you see in the picture above, not because I liked the fabric (I really hate polyester), but because the colors were perfect to go with the sweater. I also had to settle for polyester lining, because I was shopping at Jo-Ann's and not someplace upscale like G Street Fabrics in Maryland where I used to live. Normally I only line in rayon. My mom thinks I'm a snob about these things; you may, too, but hear me out.

We didn't have time to choose a pattern at Jo-Ann's, so I bought enough fabric (I thought) for a long-sleeved top and skirt, and then went on line and got the pattern, Vogue 8627, from voguepatterns.com. I've never been crazy about raglan sleeves, but I didn't want to put too many seams in that embroidery. The jacket had a little waist definition and a deep V neck, both flattering for my Mrs. Santa figure, I reasoned. I cut the jacket out sometime last spring and then let it sit until a couple of weeks ago.

Note on sewing polyester in winter: Don't! The static is awful! One of my fingers is numb from a static shock I got while ironing the lining. Both fabrics stick to everything and make my hair stand on end. The synthetic suede won't hold a press, either. I just tried on the jacket shell and it definitely needs something. I hate to put in shoulder pads (too '80's), but this thing has no shape at all. What do you think? Is there any way to make this project work?

Speaking of the '80's, the title of this post is a reference to a bumper sticker I used to see all the time in Germany in the early 1980's. The sticker said "Atomkraft? Nein, Danke!" which means, "Nuclear power? No, thank you!" Over the years DH and I have used "Nein, Danke!" to express our disdain for any number of bad concepts.

Recipe Report - Spicy Pasta With Sweet Potatoes

This recipe appears on page 188 of the November 2010 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I'm not sure what happened to October; like the month itself, the BHG issue just disappeared. Anyway, I chose this recipe because it involved some of my favorite ingredients, including sweet potatoes, peanut butter, cream cheese and Sriracha hot chili sauce, all mixed together with rigatoni. It was fairly quick to make (about half an hour). The sweet potatoes and green onions had to be chopped (DH did the chopping for me, which made the prep even faster!), but otherwise there was very little prepping to do.

The verdict? Very tasty. Spicy, rich, and filling. I was in the middle of savoring the fruits of our labor (with a glass of Creekbend white wine from Oliver, a local winery), when my cell phone rang. Thirty Cub Scouts were waiting at the door to the museum; I had agreed to do an after-hours tour and forgot! Oops! Off I ran--when I got back an hour and a half later, a quick warm-up and the casserole was still delicious, even though my boys had deserted the kitchen for their electronic toys.

I wish I'd made this crocheted stingray...

...but I didn't; it's the work of one of the many volunteer crocheters who made a whole coral reef to teach kids about the need to protect our environment (there's even a section of the crocheted reef that's dead, with trash tangled up in it). I happened onto the Indiana Reef in September during a visit to the Indiana State Museum to see the Titanic exhibit (fabulous, by the way--two thumbs way, way up!). Here's a link where you can find out more about the Indiana Reef:

http://www.indianamuseum.org/about/newsroom/newsitem.asp?newsid=24

Crochet was the first needlework I learned how to do and it still has a special place in my heart, although I have to agree with the site whatnottocrochet.wordpress.com that crochet can be really tacky in the wrong hands. My mom and dad are moving and unearthing treasures from the distant past every day, so I'm hoping for the rediscovery of several crocheted outfits I made in high school, particularly a purple pantsuit made of worsted weight acrylic. Stay tuned for that one.

In other news, I survived another October at the museum, and with huge effort and massive expenditure of time we managed to raise about $2000 from our two fundraisers, just about what it cost us to pay for the routine annual maintenance on our heating system. Sigh.

This morning DH and I celebrated my relative freedom from fundraising responsibilities, and some gloriously warm and sunny fall weather, to do some outside work on our little property in the country. I ripped out or mowed down thousands of weeds taller than myself before declaring just before noon that I was finished for the day. He's full of energy (of course) and making noises about going back tomorrow. We may both require Ben-Gay and ibuprofen just to make it out of bed in the morning, but oh, well, it's exercise.

A very cute little yellow kitten attached itself to me while I was working outside. Unfortunately I hadn't brought any snacks (well, fortunately for me and unfortunately for the kitten). I'm thinking tomorrow I should raid Mr. Fuzz's and Vickster's private stash; I'm sure they would agree to sharing with those less fortunate than themselves.

I resisted naming the little guy, but one more morning of pulling it out of harm's way every five seconds and I might succumb. This kitten has zero survival skills and likes to sleep on the big truck tires and play with the weed whacker. Really, kitty, didn't your mother teach you anything?

Talbots "Final Sale" in More Ways than One

During the 20 years I was in the Foreign Service, I spent thousands and thousands of dollars on clothes from Talbots. There were lots of reasons why I loved my Talbots clothes (nice quality, beautiful fabrics and colors), but the most important was that they always fit. I am short and overweight and those WP sizes really worked for me. I have always liked to sew my own clothes, but with two kids, a 24/7 job, and a need to occasionally sleep, it was great to be able to rely on Talbots to provide my professional wardrobe. The clothes weren't cheap, but I tried to take advantage of the sales, and the sight of a red and white box in the mail always made me happy.

I knew something had changed a couple of years ago when I ordered a pair of jeans on sale that was way, way too tight, made for a different species of creature altogether. We're talking tight from the knees up, and wouldn't button at the waist. I never got around to sending those jeans back, nor did I magically shrink to fit them, so after they had hung several months in the closet I dispatched them to a thrift store where some short person with skinny everything hopefully found them useful. Still, I didn't lose faith in Talbots, which had outfitted me so well for so long, and I picked up a pair of black embroidered capris last year that were cute and comfortable. I have already worn and washed them to death.

I reasonably assumed that whatever the fit issue was with the jeans, it had been solved, and a couple of weeks ago I ordered three t-shirts and another pair of black capris, these denim and spandex, on sale. The total, with shipping, was $125.15, which wasn't especially cheap, but hey, Talbots has my size and the mall, forty minutes away in Bloomington, doesn't.

Well, as you have probably guessed, the black capris, like the jeans a couple of years ago, were designed for no woman alive. The crotch length suggested hip-huggers, but the waist was cinched in at least two sizes too tight and scooped down in the front. The waistband wasn't contoured in the back and stuck out awkwardly. The lower hips fit well, but that waistband cinched me in at an awkward place and created a double muffin top that no t-shirt could hide.

One of the t-shirts was a little loose, one too small and one just right. I decided to send back the capris and the too-small t-shirt. When I looked at the receipt, however, I noticed that the capris were not listed on the return form because, according to the order summary, they were "Final Sale". I had never seen such a thing in over 20 years of shopping from the Talbots catalog, so I called the 800 number on the back of the order summary and asked what Talbots could possibly be thinking, sending out pants that fit no one and marking them "Final Sale".

The very nice fellow who answered the phone explained that Talbots had just instituted the final sale policy recently, because of the large number of returns.
Evidently it occured to no one at Talbots that after a customer has been tricked once into purchasing a poorly-designed, ill-fitting item that can't be worn or returned, she is not likely to purchase anything else in the future. That could solve the problem of the large number of returns, but perhaps not in the way that Talbots management was hoping.

I managed to halfway fix that waistband by inserting a triangle of fabric on both sides to make more room. It wasn't a professional fix by any means, but it does mean that I can wear them with a long shirt and breathe, too. Still, my faith in Talbots is deeply shaken. Next time I'll just go to the mall.