Soup!

It was a little overcast and cool today and I decided that a week of turkey leftovers was enough for me, so I pulled out the wonderful new stock pot that Kay and Gary gave me for Christmas. I pulled off the meat and put in the bones and skin, added salt, pepper, celery, carrots, onion, some bay leaves and a clove of garlic. I seem to put garlic in most things that aren’t sweet. I added water and put in on the stove to simmer all afternoon. I turned on the fireplaces and admired the new gas logs I had installed and even though I now don’t have the lovely smell of wood burning, I also don’t have the soot and the ashes and the sparks and the concern about a chimney fire. I can now have a fireplace heating up the room even on a windy day. The installer told me that after 2011, there will be burn days and perhaps we will soon not be able to have wood-burning fireplaces at all. He also warned me not to burn anything in the fireplaces. He has had to go and try to remove marshmallows from a gas log. It wasn’t very successful.

When I was the Area Advisor in BSF, I used to invite the Teaching Leaders for Soup! some time in December after they started their Christmas break. I would make two or three kinds of soup and we would have a simple lunch. I miss that – the interchange of ideas, the telling about the things that happened in their classes and just visiting as friends. I may have to invite them again, especially since I have a huge box of books that they can go through and take whatever intrigues them.

Mark and I had planned to redo the kitchen and after he went on ahead of me, I decided to do the project anyway. I redid the kitchen and then I rewired the house and had everything painted and refinished and finally I am done. It is still the same little house we lived in for 47 years but it is spruced up a bit. In the process of trying to simplify my life I have given hundreds of books away as well as lots of other things, but there are some books that perhaps my teaching leaders could benefit from having. . . and I would get to see them. I will have to get my soup recipes out.

Now I will put the turkey meat I saved from the bones into the broth and perhaps some noodles. I will heat up a roll that I have in the freezer and begin a new book. I will turn up the flame in the fireplace and Ms Callie and I will spend a cozy night at home.

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