I’ve never considered myself a skilled soup maker, the kind of cook with a grounded intuition about herbs and acids (like the head chef at Magpie who is an actual soup goddess), but I think I may be improving. This year I’ve done more riff soups, kitchen-sink soups, and non-recipe soups than ever before and most of them have been quite fine. Some have even been splendid.

And then a couple weeks ago, Adam Roberts did a post about soup over at Cup of Jo. His approach is both practical and inspiring, the exact sort of slapdash, there-is-no-one-right-way philosophy that opens me up to explore and grow, and now I feel liberated to soup* with even more abandon and conficence.

*Make soup, make verbs. The sky’s the limit.

***

Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste was my favorite book of 2020 and now it’s been made into a movie.

I haven’t seen it yet (have you?) but I’m eagerly awaiting its release on Amazon Prime.

***

Two weeks ago, we scored three free tickets to Drum Tao, a Japanese drum and dance ensemble.

The physicality of the show was absolutely mind-boggling: a little bit like Cirque du Soleil but with drumming and martial arts, flute playing, acrobatics, chanting, and an enormous variety of drums and sticks, some as big as baseball bats. At first I was a little edgy — the way they were wailing on those drums just a few feet from my precious noggin! — but I soon realized that these were some seriously skilled people who had a good handle (literally) on what they were doing. 

Our seats were in the very first row, which I didn’t know until we arrived (squee!), and then another attender told me that the tickets had sold out within 24 hours of going on sale: There’s nothing like a good scarcity story to make me feel lucky!

***

I’ve always been in awe of Rosanna Nafziger’s writing. Our parents were friends when we were children (I have fuzzy memories of gathering around their kitchen table, big loaves of her mama’s brown bread, and us kids running around their hilly West Virginian yard), and back when she had a blog, I followed along religiously (and still mourn its ending). She’s been writing essays, though(!), and her recent piece about money and poverty and giving and religion is both honest and generous, a balance which can be hard to strike as a writer. Highly recommend.

***

I have not read many books in recent months but I devoured Feast by Hannah Howard, pun intended. The food, the stories, the inside look at kitchens, the excruciating detailing of disordered eating — it was truly a feast.

Note: I recommend the book with one caveat. Even as a person with a pretty grounded relationship with food, some of the descriptions of her eating disorder were difficult to read. Know your limits.

***

Wise words from Tim Minchin.

What will you do with your one meaningless life?

This same time, years previous: labor pains, a family milk cow, the quotidian (2.4.19), twelve, the quotidian (2.6.17), loss, cheesy bacon toasts, eight, in which we enroll our children in school, travel tips.

Every morning when I get the NY Times newsbrief (or whatever you call it) in my inbox, I scroll straight through the headlines down to the bottom where they always post a single recipe, usually something from the NYT Cooking archives. Most of the time it’s a recipe I’m not interested in, like the latest iteration of pan-fried chicken breasts or yet another version of brothy noodles, but every now and then the recipe jumps straight off the screen, grabs me by the shoulders, and screams “MAKE ME.”

As was the case with the Spiced Irish Oatmeal with Cream and Crunchy Sugar.

I’ve made them twice now and then I (almost) ran out of steel-cut oats so, in a mild panic, I bought them in an expensive little tin from the chain grocery store because I didn’t want to wait until the next time my mom made a run to the bulk food store.   

The first time there were some issues: 1) the pan was over full even though it was the correct size, and 2) the oats looked disgusting, all gluey and gray and blech — nothing at all like the glorious staged photo in the NYTimes. 

But they tasted amazing. “Now this is an oatmeal I could eat every day,” my husband said, and if any of you 1) know my husband, and 2) understand his relationship to oatmeal (the two are barely on speaking terms), you will understand what a profoundly moving statement that is. 

So I made them a second time with tweaks and, while they weren’t twinning with the fancy NYTimes oatmeal in the photo, they were definitely kissing kin, the sort of relatives who know what each other does for work and share the same dangling earlobes and hooded eyelids. Family, obviously.

partially baked

giving it a stir

These oats require a long bake time, so either mix them up the night before and then bake them in the morning while you’re out milking the cow or going for a run (as one does), or simply bake them the night before along with the supper’s baked potatoes, then store them in the fridge and reheat individual servings in the microwave the next morning. 

before the last spin in the oven: a flurry of sugar and dots of butter

Although with the latter option, there is one problem: a fresh pan of these oats is irresistible — every time I walked by the pan cooling on top of the stove, I took a bite or three, utterly helpless against their buttery, spicy, caramelly, nubbly charm. 

terrible nighttime lighting, but still: that caramelly goodness!

Wicked good is what they are.

accidentally unshaken milk is NOT a problem

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Spiced Irish Oatmeal
Adapted from the New York Times.

I cut the recipe in half (if doubling, bake it in a 9×13 pan), reduced the sugar, upped the spices, dialed back the water, and stirred multiple times while baking. 

1 cup steel-cut oats
3 tablespoons butter, divided
¼ cup cream
3 cups boiling water
½ rounded teaspoon cinnamon
½ rounded teaspoon cardamon
¼-½ teaspoon salt 
2-4 tablespoons demerara sugar
flaky sea salt, for garnish

Melt two tablespoons of the butter over medium-high heat. Add the oats and stir for 3-5 minutes until toasty and golden brown. Add the salt and spices and stir another minute. Transfer the oats to a buttered 9-inch pie pan or a square baking dish. Add the cream and boiling water and give it a stir. (If baking later, now’s the time to cover it with plastic and refrigerate.)

Bake the oats at 350 degrees for about 30-40 minutes. Stir after 15 minutes, and then again about 10 minutes later. One the oats are fairly tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed, give them one more stir and then dot the top with the remaining tablespoon of butter, sprinkle with the raw sugar, and bake for another 10-20 minutes. (I haven’t tried this yet, but I imagine that a brief run under the broiler at the very end might seriously boost the caramelization factor.)

Sprinkle with flaky salt and serve with milk.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (1.30.23), eight fun things, all things Thursday, the quotidian (1.30.17), crispy pan pizzas, when dreams speak, lemon creams, mornings, peanut butter and honey granola.

We got one of our pigs drunk this week, accidentally.

My husband and I racked two five-gallon carboys — one cyser, and the other spiced cranberry mead — leaving us with a gallon pail of lees, the dead yeast and fermented bits of fruit, as well as a bunch of thick, cloudy alcohol that we didn’t bother saving. It was too much to flush down the toilet, and if we threw it in the garden, the dogs would eat it (we know this because we offered them a test sample and they went for it), so “Feed it to the pigs?” I suggested.

“No way,” my child said. “You’ll make them sick.”

The bucket of lees sat on the counter for a whole day until my husband and I finally agreed it could be disposed of in the field. Dump it out in the field, we instructed the child firmly, overriding the loud oppositions. Tossed in a wide arc, we explained, the majority of alcohol would seep into the ground, and the chickens and pigs would have to actively search to find the bits of fruit. There are a lot of animals and not much fruit. It’d be fine. 

But the child didn’t hear the bit about the wide arc (perhaps my husband and I spoke more to each other than the child? perhaps the child thought the parents were overriding the concern about drunk animals with their parental wisdom? perhaps the child simply wasn’t thinking?), because the child, that dear, dear child, poured that bucket of lees directly into the pigs’ breakfast bowl.

That afternoon the child’s sibling reported that something was wrong with one of the pigs. “It’s laying in the field, twitching and not moving.”

As of yet unaware of the pigs’ special breakfast, I said, “Did one of the cows step on it? Is it injured?”

“It’s breathing really heavy.” 

And then it dawned on me. I phoned the child-turned-pig bartender and inquired how, exactly, the lees had been disposed of.

Child: I fed it to the pigs. Like you told me to.
Me: One of the pigs is passed out in the field.
Child: I told you they’d get drunk!
Me: I know. Which is why we told you to throw it out in the field. YOU MAY HAVE KILLED A PIG.

We both snorted — the situation was just too absurd to stay mad — but dang, it’d sure be a bummer if the pig died.

The inebriated pig was loaded unto a wagon and haul into the milking shed to sleep it off. Six hours later the pig was still snoring heavily, so I called my older son who was at the hospital in the middle of his ER shift.

Me: What do you do with drunk patients? 
Him: Let them sleep it off.
Me: You don’t induce vomiting? 
Him: No meds, and we don’t pump stomachs anymore.

I told him about our drunk pig. “Will it die?”

Him: Maybe, but probably not.
Me: Can I bring a drunk pig to the ER? Think they’d treat him?
Him: Do it.

(I did not do it.)

The next morning, my husband reported the pig was still sleeping, but a little later the kids said it was waking up, slowly spinning in circles. At noon, I went down to check on the pig myself. 

He was wobbly-legged, but standing. He looked stoned.

I offered him water. He declined. He snuffled the ground, gingerly rearranging the wood chips and hay that made up his bed.

I left him to it, and by that evening he was walking around again. Now, a couple days later, he’s completely back to normal. 

The end.

This same time, years previous: banoffee pie, ricotta pancakes, launching, the quotidian (1.27.20), overnight baked oatmeal, vindication, women’s march on Washington, through my lens: a wedding, and then we moved into a barn.