With a wind chill of 18, what do you do? Make stoup!

What is stoup? We'll get to that later.

On February 2, Punxsutawney Phil stuck his little head out of his hole and declared six more weeks of winter. In Alaska folks grabbed their shotguns and headed for Pennsylvania. Six more weeks of THIS!?! Oh, @#$@ NO! Down here, in Memphis, we just shook our heads and said,"Don't you mean six weeks of winter...finally?" It is now February 11. Phil was a little late with his prediction, but it seems he may have gotten it right. No. We aren't under two feet of snow, but it has been super cold and windy (by Tennessee standards), and flurrying all day. I went to a pancake breakfast this morning. As I was walking outside, a dear friend of mine made a very wise observation. "Now, I know why deer can retract their..." Since there is the chance some children might be reading this, I'll just leave that last statement as a "fill in the blank". I think you get the idea of how cold it is today.

So. What do you do when it gets that cold? You make soup. I have been waiting for soup weather. I know, it has been cool enough a few times this year that we could eat soup. However, this is the first day it was cold enough that as I was leaving breakfast, my mind was already mulling over what type of soup to make for lunch. I love soup. I know, as a society, we use the word love too loosely, but I LOOOOOOOOVE soup! Potato, french onion, chicken noodle, broccoli cheddar, vegetable. I love them all. Nothing beats the chills, or the sniffles, like a hot bowl of soup. So, for lunch I made soup...

...or, stoup.

 

Gettin' hungry yet?

I have a problem when I make soup. I add things. Lot's of things. You see, I decided to make some vegetable beef soup. I browned a pound of ground beef with a large onion and some Pennsylvania grown garlic. (Yep! I'm still trying to work through all the garlic Aunt Marcia sent back in October.) Once I drained the grease off, I added three cups of beef broth, and a cup of ham broth. Then, the adding really began. Two cans of veg-all, a can of green beans, a can of sliced potatoes, a can of petite diced tomatoes, and half a cup of quinoa (That's those little squiggly things you see in the picture above. They are a great source of protein and fiber...and the kids love them.).

Whew! I need to catch my breath.

After simmering for twenty minutes, I added a box of macaroni noodles. Once those became edible, I added the powdered cheese mix (Oooh! I guess that makes this soup use # 122 for macaroni and cheese!), and stirred it up. By the time lunch was ready, as you can see in the bowl, there was very little liquid left. What is an extremely important element in soup? The liquid, of course! Now I have a dilemma. I've added so much stuff that I don't have much liquid. I can't really call this soup. Can I? No! If I called this soup, the great culinary gods would race out of the giant kitchen stadium in the sky, and give me the what for! What does a man do? Change the name. Thus we had stoup for lunch. So, what is stoup? It's soup, with enough extras, one might be attempted to call it stew. It isn't soup. It isn't stew, but it is...I mean, was...mighty good.

The peach cobbler was good too! But, that's another story for another day.