Wednesday, January 7, 2009

My Mother Taught Me Well

Last night, I needed something to eat. I was in the mood for soup. But alas, our pantry and food storage only holds cans of creamed chicken and mushroom, and 10-year old cans of tomato. Hmm. I took stock of my options and went to work.

1. Start with some Italian sausage. This sausage is in true sausage form; thaw it in the microwave and then squeeze it out of it's casing. Fun, but rather messy. Cast the casing aside. (Sometimes Albertson's will have "clearance" meat. At such times, always stock up and keep meat in freezer.)

2. Brown the sausage in a pot with some already chopped up onion you find in the fridge. I believe this onion was left over from our family pizza party on New Years Day. Hey! It was still good!

3. As the sausage is browning and the onion is cooking, peel and cut the three carrots you find in the fridge. Find the wilting celery in the fruit drawer and use all the ribs that aren't too flabby or yellow. Chop those up as well.

4. Before you toss in the veggies, pour in the two pints of home-bottled tomatoes you found in the storage room. It's not going to be enough liquid, so fill one of the pint jars up 2 or 3 times with water and add it to the pot.

5. Add your veggies as well as a spoonful of garlic. Don't bother with cloves; just buy the big jar of garlic from Costco and keep it in your fridge. It comes in handy, though it may take a year or two to use it all.

6. Find whatever fun pasta you have in your cupboard. Say no to spaghetti, linguini, and the like and yes to penni, rigatoni, farfalle, macaroni, etc. I happened to find some tri-colored fusilli (you know, the spirals?) and dumped those in.

7. Season with some dried oregano, basil, black pepper, and a pinch of salt. Go easy, you already have the favors of the sausage, but you want to add just a little more 'Italian umph!'

8. Boil/simmer until the pasta is soft. Hopefully, the veggies are still slightly al dente. If not, it will still taste good.

9. Spoon up a big bowl and eat with a smile.


Do you think anyone would be interested in a Hinckley Family cook book? I've always wanted to compile one...

3 comments:

Dan said...

That sounds really good! You may not remember this, because you may have been on your mission and we may have forgotten to write you about it in all the one or two letters we sent you, but Megan has a recipe for Italian Sausage soup that sounds 97% similar and we made that for the Hinckley soup party, and it was the talk of the town! It was all gone way before anything else. That is a dang good soup. Good work.

Aly said...

Oh my gosh, it seems like so much work! (Well, at least for me). I think all of the domestic genes in the family went to your mom and then passed on to you Hinckley girls, because heaven knows my mom and I are hardly domesticated.

I just ate a frozen dinner for dinner tonight because that's the quickest warm meal I can come up with. I had a hard enough time even waiting 5 minutes for my food to cook.

I probably miss out on a lot of good food because I am not willing to wait to cook up something good. Well, and let's not forget the fact that I don't really know how to cook anything other than the basics. Good thing I don't have kids, because I think they would starve.

The Willeyes said...

I would be, I'm not in the family...but I would love one. Can i be honorary? :)