Potage Avec N'importe Quoi (Soup with Anything)

This simple potage (soup) is derived from guidelines in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We love it at my house because it makes a cream soup that doesn't require cream for creaminess or flour for thickening. First you make a soup base with potatoes and onions (or leeks), water & salt. The potatoes thicken the soup and make it creamy, and the onions make it sweet.

Testimonial: At dinner before a choir practice, I served this soup with the variation of cubed potatoes, corn, and carrots added to cook briefly at the end, and finished the soup with cream. Everyone loved it. You know how picky kids are? Even the kids came back for seconds.

After the potatoe/onion or leek base is cooked, you puree it, and then you can add pretty much anything you like, including leftover vegetables. Eat it right away or freeze it in serving sized containers. Bring it to lunch or pull it out for supper and microwave it until hot. You can finish it with a little butter or cream, or use olive oil, if you like. Julia Child encouraged experimentation with the ingredients. Perhaps, she suggested, you may create une spécialité de la maison, and the recipe will become a closely guarded family secret.

3 or 4 potatoes sliced
3 or 4 onions or leeks thinly sliced
2 quarts water
1 T salt

Bring the first four ingredients to a boil, turn the heat down, and let it simmer for 40 to 50 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Stir occasionally.

Mash the vegetables or puree them in a blender.

Reheat the puree just to boiling and add any vegetable you like, cut in even cubes. So far I've used broccoli, cauliflower, corn, mushrooms, carrots, and potatoes either alone or in combination. Simmer for 10 min.

Just Before Serving, Finish the Soup

2 to 3 T chopped parsley
4 to 6 T or more cream or 2 to 3 T butter

Stir in the cream or butter and sprinkle with the parsley.

If you don't have parsley, don't worry. I just finished eating a mug of this soup with cauliflower and butter added at the end. I was out of parsley, but I didn't mind.

Derived from Potage Parmentier (Leek or Onion and Potato Soup)
From the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, and Julia Child
Serves 6 to 8

Repost of thoughts from 2004, sent to my Catholic friends

I sent this to a select list of people I know just now. I'm on my way to go shopping. I'm going to try again this year to have a vegan Lent.

........

I found the thoughts included in this email about
Ash Wednesday in a blog I posted in 2004. I hope
you don't mind if I share them with you.

But first: a plug for Ash Wednesday Mass at 8
p.m. at St. Thomas Aquinas Church. The Mass is
being said by a Jesuit from St. Patrick Seminary
in Latin. Make sure not to miss the
world-traveled St. Ann Choir singing Gregorian
chant and polyphony. Come get your ashes the old
style way.

Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem
reverteris.

Remember, o man, that thou art dust, and unto
dust shalt thou return.


Will Everyone Who Wants to Be Holy Raise a Hand?

================================================

----------- Start blog --------------------------

This quote the Morning Prayer for Ash Wednesday
summarizes part of what a fast can help us to do:

-------- quote -----------------
May we abstain from what we do not really need
and help our brothers who are in distress.

-------- end quote -----------------


Even if we cannot establish any direct connection
between our underconsumption and someone else's
ability to get food, we are able to create that
direct connection by giving alms. Freeing up our
resources by underconsumption lets us live on
less money, and it therefore allows us to be more
generous and gracious with our surplus, as God is
generous and gracious.

The Pope [JP II] said these thing about Lenten
practices at his Ash Wednesday audience:

-------- quote -----------------

The Church has always indicated some useful means
to advance on this path [to holiness]. First of
all, humble and docile adherence to the will of
God accompanied by incessant prayer; the
penitential forms that are typical of the
Christian tradition, such as abstinence, fasting,
mortification and self-denial even of goods that
are legitimate in themselves; concrete gestures
of acceptance in relating to one's neighbor,
which today's page of the Gospel evokes with the
word "alms." All this is proposed again with
greater intensity during the Lenten period, which
represents, in this connection, an "intense time"
of spiritual training and of generous service to
brothers.

-------- end quote -----------------

Pope John Paul II introduced the above practices
as means to get holy. Will everyone who wants to
get holy raise her or his hand? Holiness doesn't
mean self-righteousness. For those of us who
hunger and thirst for righteousness Lenten
practices can help get us in shape spiritually.
To paraphrase what the Pope said, here is what we
have to do:

Live in God's will (not in sin)
Pray always (which helps us with the first
requirement)
Abstain from what we don't need
Fast
Humble ourselves (mortification)
Say no to self-will and selfish pursuits even to
things that are good that might distract us from
God
Be generous and give alms (which the Pope called
"gestures of acceptance in relating to one's
neighbor")

Lent is one of the special times to practice
these things that bring us to holiness, because
holiness is expected of every Christian. Lent is
our boot camp for our life during the rest of the
liturgical year.

http://catholic-fasting.blogspot.com/

Vegan Meals for March 12, 2004

Friday. Walk. Mass. Rollos.
B: bagel, cream cheese, and tomatoes with coffee (cream cheese makes that not-vegan, but vegetarian)
L:Kashi with soy milk and a banana
D:Coucous Pine Nut and Veggie Salad, Water with Pomegranate Syrup

Sunday February 29, 2004: We Celebrate the Resurrection

Christians do not fast on Sundays, even in Lent, because every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection

I went out after 8:30 Mass at Holy Cross with the 70+ group that I like. I ordered steak, hashbrowns with veggies, toast, coffee.
Dispatched the huge plate of food post haste. Sigh.

For some reason people started talking about their favorite ways to eat eggplant. Most of them are Italian, so eggplant is a favored
vegetable (unlike in the Irish neighborhoods where I grew up). One man, Al (?), said he grills slices of the eggplant from his garden, then
he puts a slice of provolone on top of one slice of eggplant, and tops it with another slice of eggplant, and serves them as hors d'oevres.
Sounds good. Another woman described grilling eggplant, then rolling it up with proscuito, and serving it with a nice tomato sauce.
Everyone is looking for ways to cook it without frying, since it soaks up so much oil. One of the several Roses said she boils it. That
doesn't sound bad either.

I'd talked with my foodie friend marshafromSF about eggplant when we were out to eat at Liverpool Lil's in the City last Sunday. I told her
that every recipe I had ever seen said to salt eggplant to get the bitterness out. When a smooth talking guy at Sun who prided himself on
his gourmet proclivities told me he made ratatouille at the San Francisco Culinary Institute, I asked him if they salted the eggplant ahead of
time, and when he said "No" my opinion of the culinary institute dropped precipitously. Marcia said she never salts eggplant either, but she
uses Chinese or Japanese, and they are small and probably don't get bitter. She cooks the sliced eggplant on a griddle with raised ribs that
have been ever so slightly coated with olive oil. The eggplant slices don't stick that way, and she gives them another brush of olive oil to
flavor them before serving. I told Al at breakfast how Marcia had said that the eggplant gets nice black grill marks from the griddle, and
then I realized, that's the same effect you get when you grill them. That's right! he said.

The gang from Holy Cross also debated the topic of salting ahead of time. Everyone has heard of it, but nobody said they did it. "I've never
had a problem with bitterness," seems to be the consensus.

The SF foodies don't have anything over the gourmandizing of these Italians. Probably could take a few lessons from them

Monday March 1: Vegan Meals for Day 6

B: Kashi, soy milk, and banana
L: Hummus and rice cakes, orange, pumpkin seeds, trail mix w/chocolate chips.
Snack: Banana.
D: I forget.

Meeting a Fellow Christian Blogger

Meeting a Fellow Christian Blogger

Around 2/27/03 Norma wrote:

I came across your blog on Christian fasting during Lent. I had no idea I was following a church suggestion. My husband and I always have a Friday night date--usually the same pub type restaurant, spending rarely more than $25, and home by 6:30 p.m. (big party folk). A couple of weeks ago I suggested we not go out during Lent, but instead have friends over for soup and salad. We would donate $125 to a medical mission on the west side of town. As it turns out, I'm serving broccoli soup and fresh fruit, and apple pie. Hadn't intended it to be meatless, but thought about it when I read your blog.

Norma
http://uglyacronym.blogspot.com
http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roseanne Sullivan"
To: "Norma"
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 6:13 PM
Subject: Christian fasting

Hi Norma,

I'm glad to see that someone is reading my blog ;-) But I'm delighted that you had the great idea to eat more simply on Fridays during Lent and give the money to a good cause. Must be the Holy Spirit working in your good heart.

If you're Catholic you might want to know that abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent is mandatory, with a fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Your making today's meal meatless might be the Holy Spirit at work again!

I read some of your collecting my thoughts blog. Liked your analysis about how unobjective reporting is. Bush attacks but Kerry simply says something. Bah!

Couldn't bring up the other blog for some reason. I'll try some other time.

It's good to "meet" you.

Take care,

Roseanne

Norma wrote:
>
> Good morning Roseanne,

We are Lutherans, and our "soup, salad and saints" dinner went well and we
became much better acquainted (we are all members of the same church, http://www.ualc.org. As it turned out one person is virtually a vegetarian so even the menu was right. Next week, potato soup! An one was a Sullivan.

My religious blog is http://uglyacronym.blogspot.com and I'm not sure why you couldn't get in. Occasionally blogger misfires, but since I use the free service, I can't complain.

I see you have additional URLs for your writings. Is that your profession?

Norma



----- Original Message -----
To: "Norma"
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 3:56 PM
Subject: Re: Christian fasting

Hi Norma,

Glad your "soup, salad, and saints" dinner went well. Wonder if I'm remotely related to the Sullivan at your dinner. My branch settled near Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Your dinner and the resulting closer connections reminds me of the verse about how "people will know you belong to Him by how you love one another." A lot of Christians don't take the community part of Christianity enough. We are a family of God's children, brothers and sisters in Christ, and we shouldn't remain just a bunch of strangers who inhabit a bunch of pews for a few hours every week. Good for you.

Besides, when we have other people over for dinner, we are entertaining Christ.

Isn't that great that your self-denial already brought many good fruits?

I figured out that your uglyacroymn blog didn't display in an ancient version of Netscape that I was had to use because it was the only version supported by the IT group at Sun Microsystems, which is the company from which I was laid off recently. I just downloaded Netscape 7 yesterday and am trying to switch over. It downloads my mail slower than Netscape 4.79 so I'm reluctant to switch.

Thanks for asking about my writing.

I have been a technical writer for 20 years. All of my life I was preparing myself to be a creative writer. I studied journalism and I got an M.A. in creative writing. Then I became a technical writer because it paid well, and I had two small children to support after a divorce. But I still kept writing
other things.

Lately I've been writing a lot about Catholic issues because I am in the second year of a three year program at San Jose's Institute for Leadership in Ministry, and I have to write papers about such topics as "Death, Burial, and Resurrection with Christ During Baptism." I get really into them, and I write 16 pages when the assigned page length is only 3. Some of my articles have gotten published in small newspapers, and I'm trying to publish more.

After I got my notification of termination, I got about 6 months combined notification and severance pay so I've been looking at the termination as a gift
from God. I've been writing a lot and trying to get my home office set up so I can freelance and maybe get started with my creative writing again.

The writing website was encouraged by my son. My son said that I should put what I write online, and he set up the first simple page layout for me.

The web site already helped me get a freelance writing gig. The editor asked for writing samples, and I sent him to my website. He said he was pleased, and
responded positively to my query about an article, which I subsequently wrote for him.

Now I've got an assignment to write about a "Sacred Space" competition whose entries are on display at San Francisco's Presidio, so that's interesting, and they pay pretty well.

So the short answer is, yes writing is my profession, but right now unemployment is most of my income.

I'm glad to hear again from you. I'll check out your blogs some more as I have time.

Wishing you all of God's best blessings.

Roseanne


Subject: Re: Writing and blogging
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 19:40:02 -0500
From: "Norma"

Dear Roseanne,

Thanks for the update on your writing.


I love to write, which is why I have 3 blogs. However, I'm retired from a profession I loved (librarianship), so now I am the richest person in the world--I have time. All the verbs we use with money we use with time. I look forward to reading more, and when you are famous, I can say I knew you when! I am "published," but for the most part it is in my professional journals.

Norma

Saturday February 28: Vegan Meals for Day 4

B:  hashbrowns with sauteed tomatoes, mushrooms, green peppers, and onion. English muffin.
Most restaurants around here are willing to substitute omelette veggies for eggs when they find out I don't eat eggs. I invented this recipe at Baker's Square, and they make it for me and others now all the time and charge less than $3.
L:  fresh salsa, Fritos; leftover eggplant stir fry and rice.
D:   Kashi cereal, soy milk, banana, followed by an assortment of roasted root vegetables from the deli at Nob Hill grocery: potatoes, onions, carrots, squash.

Eggplant Stir Fry Version of the Day

I haven't settled on one favorite eggplant stir fry recipe, so I searched the Internet tonight for inspiration on how to cook the American eggplant I bought yesterday at Pak n Save. One recipe I googled had this note: Armineans measure the value of a woman by how many ways she can cook eggplant. Seems reasonable to me.

I still didn't know why they call it eggplant, so I went looking.

The following explanation of all the names for eggplant is from a site called: World Wide Words where "Michael Quinian writes about international English from a British viewpoint." The full discussion of the names for eggplant around the world is marvelously erudite. Here is the reason for the name used in English:

The name of eggplant was given it by Europeans in the middle of the eighteenth century because the variety they knew had fruits that were the shape and size of goose eggs. That variety also had fruits that are a whitish or yellowish colour rather than the wine purple that is more familiar to us nowadays. So the sort they knew really did look as though it had fruits like eggs.

Incidentally, Pak n Save is a discount grocery near where I live now in San Jose. Last night I went there because I was shopping nearby at Radio Shack. I found Pak n Save prices were twice as expensive as the other stores where I usually shop. 99 cents for a cucumber, $1.69 for lettuce, 99 cents for a bunch of green onions, 99 cents for parsley, for Pete's sake. In what sense is that a discount store? In all other senses except pricing it meets the basic criteria: big, ugly, impersonal, you load and bag your own groceries. You've got to wonder what brings people there. Maybe it's the mega size packages of stuff I never buy that I saw sitting around in large crates.

My medium-sized eggplant cost $1.99.

I go into the beautiful Nob Hill/Raley's in Milpitas, they take my groceries out of the cart, scan, bag them, carry my bags to my car, and even there I've never paid 99 cents for a cucumber or a bunch of green onions, or parsley.

Memoir alert: A quick review of my life with the humble eggplant (also see the Greek recipe for Eggplant, Tomato, Potato Stew recipe I wrote in another posting in this blog).

We never had eggplant when I was growing up. I found and cooked one eggplant recipe in the Italian cookbook I went out and bought when I had a crush on an Italian boy, and so I had my first taste of eggplant at 16 years of age, all for the love of Eddie Bertucci.

In the sub shops in Massachusetts, you can get eggplant subs. I didn't used to get that kind of sub much in my youth (but I do now when I'm back in Massachusetts since eggplant has become one of my favorite foods). What you get in the sub is essentially eggplant parmesan. Too cheesy for me.

My friend Gerry Sherman took me to a Greek restaurant in Cambridge Mass once where we had Moussaka, which includes eggplant and meat and a white sauce. I tried making it later, when I was cooking up a storm living with George in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district in the 60s, but it was too much trouble to be one of my normal set of recipes I use all the time.

In the Haight hippy rag, I found an article for ratatouille, a Provençal vegetable ragout with eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions and tomatoes, that seemed extremely exotic to me. Still have the yellowed clipping in my recipe box. I cooked it often over the years, until ratatouille stopped appealing to me. I can still hear the way Julia Child said ratatouille on her cooking show, but I can't think of a way to duplicate it in writing. Try saying Ra Ta Two Ee with an excited, fulsome, high pitched soprano voice, with a nasal accent, and don't forget to r-r-r-oll the R.

If you cook all the ingredients in ratatouille with a higher proportion of tomatoes, you have a great spaghetti sauce, which I've made often.

Around here in San Jose, with all the authentic Chinese restaurants, you can get stir fried eggplant any time you want. The best I ever had was made by Elizabeth Stanley. Her husband Jim was an editor where I worked in Saint Paul, and the family moved out to Livermore about six months after I came here, after the St. Paul company closed. They had me over to their house, and Elizabeth, who is from Taiwan, made a delicious version using Chinese eggplant, garlic and ginger that I've tried unsuccessfully to duplicate many times since then. Sun's Newark Cafe del Sol cafeteria served eggplant in its Chinese food service line, but they always cut the chunks too big and don't cook it long enough.

Note: American eggplants are large. Chinese and Japanese eggplants are not quite so deep purple, and smaller than a cucumber.

This is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
+ meatless
+ vegan
+ vegan without olive oil (use another kind of oil)

Eggplant Stir Fry Version of the Day

2 tablespoons of mixed toasted sesame oil and corn (or other bland) oil

2 teaspoons chinese chili garlic sauce (Could use hot peppers and minced garlic) or to taste

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 eggplant (could use 4 small Chinese or Japanese eggplants) cut into pieces the same size as you would cut potatoes for boiling

1 cup red, green, yellow, or a mix of peppers (frozen or fresh ) cut about the same size as the eggplant pieces

1 cup water

1 generous splash of sake or dry white wine

Heat the oil in a wok, add the chili garlic sauce and salt and stir.

Add the egpplant and peppers and stir fry until almost tender. Pour water and splash the wine over the mixture, stir again, cover, and let simmer for 5 or so minutes more.

Serve with rice.

Friday February 27: Vegan Meals for Day 3

B:  Toast with peanut butter, an orange from Carlos Fernandez tree, coffee

L:   12 Veggie Soup, Whole Wheat Tortilla heated rolled around heated Vegetarian Refried Beans and Salsa Fresca (Mexicana Mild Fresh Salsa)

D:   Eggplant Stir Fry and Rice, another orange

Thursday February 26: Vegan Meals for Day 2

B:  Polenta and Tomato Sauce with Beans, Corn and Mushrooms

L:   12 Veggie Soup

D:   More Polenta and Tomato Sauce

Twelve Veggie Soup

I used to meet with a RENEW faith-sharing group at Maggie and George Eckenroth's house in N.E. Minneapolis. One evening we followed a suggestion in the RENEW materials and held a Lenten soup supper.

Since hardly any Catholics realize that Lenten fasts and abstinence are still encouraged, most Catholics are at a loss to know what to do during Lent.

Eating one simple meal of soup during Lent and donating the savings to the poor is sometimes practiced with the ideal of changing the focus from "giving up things" to helping others.

We make do with less so that others might have more.

On this theme, I've seen Lenten soup dinners advertised at the Basilica of St. Mary's in Minneapolis. But why stop with one meal?

Here is the recipe for the soup I brought to the Eckenroth's in March 1989. I still have it on an index card written in now-smeared purple ink. I don't remember where I got the recipe. I do remember that George liked the soup so much that Maggie asked me for the recipe. Hope you like it too.

This is an acceptable Lenten dish for any of the following types of fasts:
   + meatless
   + vegan
   + vegan without olive oil (use another kind of oil)

Twelve Veggie Soup
Prepare the following vegetables by cutting them into small pieces
about the same size.

2 medium zucchini
1 small onion
1 medium head cauliflower
1 medium bunch brocolli
4 medium carrots
1 1/2 cup corn
1 small head cabbage
4 large tomatoes (or use a large can)
1 small bunch celery
6 large mushrooms

Put the above veggies in a large pot with the following
ingredients:

1 1/2 cup peas
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons butter or oil (vegans use oil)
1 cup barley
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon sage
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon sage
Water or broth to cover.

Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to simmer the soup
for about an hour, until the vegetables are crisp tender.

Freeze this to eat during the weeks of Lent if you don't use it all
at once. I put three quarts of the soup in glass canning jars into the freezer.

The Disappearance of the Ash Wednesday Blog, and Its Return with Much Added and Much Taken Away

Starting before 5 this morning, I wrote for a half hour about the Ash Wednesday Mass and imposition of ashes, the tiredness and sadness that comes with fasting, what I ate, why I was sad, and how prayer heals. Then I hit the space key and it all disappeared. Sigh!

What follows is a whole new set of ideas.

This quote the Morning Prayer for Ash Wednesday summarizes part of what a fast can help us to do:

May we abstain from what we do not really need and help our brothers who are in distress.

Eating a vegan diet, we abstain from foodstuffs made from animals or fish or foul or anything made from them (such as Jello, which is made from beef hooves, and chicken broth, which is made from chicken, of course). So eating a vegan diet could be seen as a type of fast in which we abstain from what we do not really need. We do not need meat or any other flesh to live healthy lives or to get our required amounts of protein.

Many more resources go into the production of meat than go into the production of an equivalent amount of non-meat protein. If we don't eat flesh, does that alievate other people's hunger? I think it does, but I have to do some more research on the global effects of such a change in diet. (Eat less locally so others can eat more globally, does that really work?)

What I need to do is answer the question of whether simply eating lower on the food chain actually benefits anyone except myself--in my waistline and my pocketbook.

Even if we cannot establish any direct connection between our underconsumption and someone else's ability to get food, we are able to create that direct connection by giving alms. Freeing up our resources by underconsumption lets us live on less money, and it therefore allows us to be more generous and gracious with our surplus, as God is generous and gracious.

The Pope said these thing about Lenten practices at his Ash Wednesday audience:

The Church has always indicated some useful means to advance on this path [to holiness]. First of all, humble and docile adherence to the will of God accompanied by incessant prayer; the penitential forms that are typical of the Christian tradition, such as abstinence, fasting, mortification and self-denial even of goods that are legitimate in themselves; concrete gestures of acceptance in relating to one's neighbor, which today's page of the Gospel evokes with the word "alms." All this is proposed again with greater intensity during the Lenten period, which represents, in this connection, an "intense time" of spiritual training and of generous service to brothers.

Pope John Paul II introduced the above practices as means to get holy. Will everyone who wants to get holy raise her or his hand? Holiness doesn't mean self-righteousness. For those of us who hunger and thirst for righteousness Lenten practices can help get us in shape spiritually. To paraphrase what the Pope said, here is what we have to do:

Live in God's will (not in sin)
Pray always (which helps us with the first requirement)
Abstain from what we don't need
Fast
Humble ourselves (mortification)
Say no to self-will and selfish pursuits even to things that are good that might distract us from God
Be generous and give alms (which the Pope called "gestures of acceptance in relating to one's neighbor")

Lent is one of the special times to practice these things that bring us to holiness, because holiness is expected of every Christian. Lent is our boot camp for our life during the rest of the liturgical year.