Soup Weather

Yesterday afternoon, I picked up Cindy at Griffin Tech and drove her home. After a short cuddle and a good head-patting for the dog, we decided that it would be alright if I drove to the grocery and bought the ingredients for vegetable beef soup and Mexican cornbread.

So I drove to Ingle's and bought the ingredients and came home, with a stop in between to Rite-Aid to purchase some generic Claratin for Cindy. I was fortunate to be able to find the Claratin readily, but then there was no one at the front counter who could take my money. I wandered around the store looking for a clerk. The pharmacist and his assistant were quite busy taking care of pharmaceutical requests so that they couldn't help me.

So I continued to wander the aisles of the Rite-Aid before, on my third pass, I finally encountered one of the clerks. In my growing frustration, I briskly asked her if she could check me out. She informed me, just as briskly, that the other clerk was up front and he could help me. She also informed me that they had been removing the garbage.

Well, la de da.

Anyway, I finally went back to the front and encountered the other clerk, who seemed surprised that I was there, but still took my money. How mighty big of him.

So at that point, I was released to return home and assemble the ingredients for our soup and cornbread.

The cornbread was very good and reminded me of how much I enjoy good cornbread. When I say that, notice that I talk about good cornbread, for there is a gracious plenty of the other kind. Much cornbread is dry or too sweet. I don't particularly enjoy yellow corn bread; I prefer white cornbread. That is not racial, just what I consider to be a regional preference. For instance, I prefer silver queen sweet corn to other, more sweet varieties.

But, despite Cindy's impression that I had not included grated cheese in the recipe, which I had, the cornbread was quite delightful. My grandmother once told me that cornbread was her favorite type of bread. There are so many types of bread to choose from, it is difficult to say that any one variety is my favorite. However, I must say that cornbread should stay high on my list as well. In these modern times, it seems that cornbread is relegated to a back bench in the world of breads. However, this is really a cultural bias, in my estimation, since we forget how much of the world, particularly the hispanic world, probably uses some form of corn bread as their bread staple.

At any rate, the only problem I had with the meal was the absence of green beans for the vegetable soup. With carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, red kidney beans, green peas and tomatoes, I think I had enough vegetables to authorize me to refer to the soup as "vegetable soup." All the same, I would have liked some green beans in the soup.

The soup was pretty good, although quite hot. Not hot with spice, but hot with temperature. I ended up filling two plastic bags and a tupperware bowl with soup, so we should be in soup for quite a while.

I must say I ended up with quite a mess in the kitchen and very little energy to clean it up. Cindy and I teamed up on that this morning before we left for work. All in all, it was a good first foray into soup season.