Monday, December 04, 2006

Left-overs soup and Laundry

Well, now you all know about the chicken fiasco I thought I'd give you an update on what has happened now. Yes, you all are going to get to read more about my food! (I think I'm starting to dream about eating more food lately.)

Early in our marriage my husband told me that he doesn't like soup because he thinks it does not fill you up. This I thought was odd since when I was growing up for the entire fall season starting about October and going through December we had soup for dinner regularly. Fall season=soup season. We had wheat chilli, bone soup (aka ten bean soup), turkey leftover soup, chicken leftover soup, beef leftover soup, and many varieties on those themes. My husband however, felt that when he eats soup all he is doing is drinking broth and not getting filled up. For this reason I tended not to make too many soups.

Yesterday I decided that we had eaten enough of the backwards bird and it was now time to make soup out of him. (Plus, my husband will be out of town for over half the week so I can eat it myself.) I made the stock and then I made noodles from scratch (which were huge because I didn't roll them out thinly enough) and it was so yummy! My only complaint was that I put in too many noodles, but when I said this my husband looked at me like I had just said something crazy (like, "maybe we shouldn't always live right next to cows.") To this he said, "I like the noodles, they give the soup some substance like the carrots and chicken." So apparently he does like soup, you just have to put really big, really recognizable chuncks in it so he can see he's actually eating real food.

Other funny things happened this weekend. I'll try to relay one. I don't know if I can catch the hilarity of my husband here, but I'm going to attempt it. This weekend my husband and I both had Saturday off of work and also my husband's brother's family was going out of town so we had some alone time. I decided Friday night that I would write down a list of things that we needed to get done on Saturday:
  • Research the schools my husband is interviewing at this week (cross your fingers!)
  • Clean the house (OK it's really a trailor, but I'm saying house anyway)
  • Fold the laundry and put it away
  • Do the dishes
  • Put up the Christmas lights

There were more things, and we got them done, but I can't think of them all right now and it doesn't matter anyway. Saturday morning we got up and my sweet, sweet husband decided to make me breakfast since I had spent the entire night waking up every stinking hour! After that he decided he'd tackle the Christmas lights and leave me to do the dishes. Pretty good division of labor since I didn't want to get cold in the frosty weather and he didn't want to do dishes. There were a lot of dishes. Enough that I still had some when he was finished with the lights. Once he came in he decided to tackle the laundry (I know, you're thinking, "Where did she find this man?"). So he was in the back of the trailor finishing the laundry. Just as I was finishing scrubbing down the kitchen after the last of the dishes he walks out and marks off Christmas lights and laundry off our list. Then I say, "Now all we need to do is clean the house." To which he says, "It's clean isn't it?" I wish I had a photo for everyone, since it clearly wasn't clean. I just looked at him in silence trying to think of how to respond when he said, "Well you did do some cleaning so that task has been done." I decided that he could be right for that day since I wouldn't be embarassed if someone stopped by. So I told him that we could go into town I would just have to change my clothing. I went back into the back of the trailor and realized that he had applied the same logic from the "clean the house" task to the "do the laundry" task. Most of the stuff had been folded and put away, but there was still some stuff on our bed clearly waiting to be put away. I just started to laugh! He came up behind me and said, "Well, it was just too hard to figure out where that stuff went!" So the laundry could be counted as having been done since clearly some laundry had been done! He is so funny!

3 comments:

Anth said...

Ha ha This post is hilarious!! I love your description of his response to your noodle comment. Perhaps our husbands are secretly related.

Dh has a very similar attitude about food - but even more so about meatless dishes. He insists that a dinner without meat is insufficient and he will be hungry again within an hour. This despite the fact that I have made some meatless things that he enjoyed and that left him feeling (gasp)full.

AND he considers the laundry "done" when the clothes are clean and in the basket. As in, nothing's put away. When he said to me, "I did the laundry," I just stared at him.

Btw, are the soup noodles easy to make? They sound good, and I've never tried making them. Do you have a good recipe?

Maggie said...

Soup noodles are really very easy to make when you've seen it done, but my directions might make is sound hard. (It really isn't hard at all.) I don't have any fancy machines to make it with like a food processor or a noodle press so my noodles probably aren't the finest, but I like it becuase that's what I grew up with.

Here it is:

1 1/2 C flour
Put this flour in a pile on the table or counter and then make a hollowed out spot in the middle like my sister does with mashed potatoes and gravy (there should be flour inbetween the hole and the counter). I call this the flour volcano.

Mix:
1 egg
1/4 t salt
1/2 t olive oil
1 T and a bit of water

Then in little bits pour the egg mixture into the hollowed out spot in the flour. Use your fingers to mix the flour from the sides of the volcano into the egg mix keeping a protective flour shield between the egg and the counter (believe me if you break the volcano you'll have a huge mess to clean up). Once you've made a sticky dough with a little of the egg mixture, add some more egg to the flour and mix more flour in from the sides of the volcano. Once all the egg is mixed in you kneed the dough for about 10 minutes.

You wont use all the flour! If you do then your noodles will be too hard. The dough should be stiff, but cohesive. Sort of like bread dough.

Chill 1 hr.

Roll out to desired thinness and then cut in desired noodle shapes. Let it dry for a bit (since it's going into soup it doesn't really need to dry all that much). Put it in the soup to cook just as you would store bought noodles. Keep in mind that your noodles will expand once they hit the soup.

If I've left anything out my mom and sister can feel free to add what I've missed (but I don't think I missed anything)

Maggie said...

Oh and also whenever I make a vegetarian dinner (I like to try to do this about once in two weeks) Dan always says, "This is really good! How can we get meet into it?" It just makes me laugh!