In talking with the 3 people [in addition to my husband] with whom I speak nearly every day, I mention that I am making pork soup for dinner. Louise & Ellyn both said “ew”. Lauren received the information in a way front-loaded to elicit some other response [“tell me your reaction to this”] so she said “sounds interesting”. She does not really care much for pork which is how I know I front-loaded the question.
I have to agree that we do not see Cambells Cream of Pork soup in the grocery store. I am not sure I have ever heard of any sort of pork soup before. Maybe some Mexican offshoot of Menudo would use pork? It is excellent though – very garlicky with lots of low carb veggies and, as of the last 5 minutes, 2 jalapeños. They are from the freezer, previously from the garden, lovingly grown by Larry, the other person to whom I speak every day. They are the hottest jalapeños we have ever grown – the hottest ones I have ever had in fact. I pickled some and various persons who have tried them all agree – they are very hot. Very good but no one can eat a whole one at one sitting. Well except the guy at Larry’s work who popped one in his mouth whole and started crunching it before Lar had a chance to tell him about the very hot part. He looked unwell for the remainder of the day and declined to have another the next day at lunch. His consumption of the one attained epic proportions by the end of that job and was an oft repeated tale at lunch time when small pieces were shared. “Yeah – whatshisname [I do not know his name] put a whole one in his mouth and we thought he was gonna die!” Anyway – I just cut the jalapeños in half, seeded them and put the halves in the soup – I will remove them before it gets too spicy. I don’t want the whole thing entirely overpowered by jalapeño.
The original concept of the pork soup was that I wanted to use up some stuff in the fridge before leaving on our trip in the morning. Now the trip is postponed and I don’t know what the heck we will eat for the next two days.
Two weeks ago, Larry’s Mom gave me a sewing machine that belonged to his grandmother. I am not a very good seamstress, but I want to make curtains for our room and I figure I will be able to handle something flat with straight lines sewn around it. All the kids will be here in less than two weeks and I have had considerable clearing out of spare bedrooms to accomplish before they all get here. Things had to be got rid of – donations to the Mission which operates a second hand store to help support their ministry to down and out people. In between trips to the woods, in celebration of the opening of deer season, Larry said he would run the stuff to town for me. We pack up the van and off he goes. An hour or so later, I see that he has returned and there is something in the back of the van that was not there before. It is a sewing machine that some lady was trying to drop off [as an aside, I should mention that this lady thought Lar was one of the down and out people who work at the Mission. He was in the woods all morning and was not looking as spiffy as he might have] Larry, seeing the fancy cams and such that came with the sewing machine his Mom gave me, thinks it will be too complicated for him to use. He wants to sew his own patches on jeans, a task I admit I give lip service to doing, but I rarely actually follow up with action of the sort that would see the jeans patched. [they cost $10 a pair at Walmart for pete’s sake! Buy new ones!] I didn’t have a lot of room for one sewing machine and now I have two. The jalapeños have imparted the proper amount of heat and have been removed. The soup is very good.
