Carrpea Soup, or, Adventures in Dining

I made pea soup the other day. Sort of. I have not had good luck with pea soup lately. The last time I made pea soup, a thing I used to make quite often when the boys were home and no one was diabetic or dieting, I rushed things and it came out quite gritty from the little chunks of still-too-dry pea halves. We like our pea soup blendered, so it's smooth. That last batch never got smooth, no matter how much time it spent whirling madly in the blender. Most of it went down the garbage disposal, unpleasant to eat.

But Ray likes home made pea soup, and as he is convalescing, I thought it would be a good thing to make. This time, trying to make the soup more nutritious and less calorie-dense, I decided carrots would be the perfect addition.

I got WAY too many carrots in the pea soup. I warn you now, never make that mistake. In fact, from now on, I will definitely not be putting any carrots in the pea soup.

It simmered on the stove all day and smelled pretty good although with heavy overtones of carrot aroma. When it was blended, it was a most unfortunate color. The supposed-to-be lovely green soup was instead a green-brown-orange color...grownge? It was ugly. Very, very ugly soup. If this soup was a dog, it would win the Annual Ugly Dog contest paws down. The soup smelled odd, although not exactly unpleasant.

We decided to eat it anyway, as we were hungry and it was already 6:30, far past our usual dinner time. Taste? Wellll, somewhere in between carrot and pea, as you might suspect. If you ask us, it was not an entirely happy marriage of flavors. Yes, I know they sell canned peas and carrots in every grocery store. But still. It was certainly edible, and not gaggy outside of it's looks, but those looks are hard to get past. Your brain does not know what to tell your tongue to expect given the wierd color and odd smell.

Pearrot soup has been served twice since then and we have eaten it, although I do not think it is aging gracefully. Some foods just get better with a day or two rest period in the fridge. This is not one of them.

Been A Long Time

It's been slow all over the blogosphere lately, and I am definitely in the lazy blogger area.

Today, Mr. Antonio Juarez and his crew are here working in the yard again. Today they put down good dirt in all the flower beds, both old and new, and moved the big cypress tree from the front door to the northwest corner of the back yard. Hopefully that tree will grow some and give us some more privacy on the back deck. And there it won't work it's roots into the footings and basement. Someone is removing the leftover roots and such by the front porch. Antonio and I will go to Sky Nursery soon and see about the nice mulch and some plants.

With everything removed from all the gardens, things are looking bare indeed. So we'll chose plants he can care for easily and I won't have to water too much or dead head.

I have to say, though, our back yard looks bigger with all the stuff by the back fence gone and the big rhody that was on the north side gone too. One of our rhodies went across the street to the neighbor's yard and a rhody went next door to Geneva's garden. Our sod from the new beds went behind us to Val's chicken run, Antonio got eggs and I don't have to pay such a huge dump fee. Everybody wins!

It will be fun to shop for plants with someone who knows what they are doing. I have always plopped things in the ground and hoped for the best. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Should work out better this time!

He cut back the snowfountain cherry too.