Cream of I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

So last week, we were all laid off. By all of us, I mean Dave, Chris, Kristy, and myself. Now, Dave and Chris were given positions immediately. I’ve submitted a resume for a chance to go overseas, but in the meantime, I’m finding ways to amuse myself. One of these amusements is cream of potato soup. This is a top five favourite dish of mine. When I went to Germany in 1999, it was one of the few things I ordered when eating out, since I could actually figure it out on the menu (I knew the fish too, but that’s another story).

Anyway! While washing clothes this afternoon, I decided that I would like mashed potatoes for lunch. Then I got to thinking that within two hours of lunch, Dave would be home. And Dave would want to cook dinner. So why don’t I boil up a lot of potatoes, mash some of them, and turn the rest into cream of potato soup? We have milk, we have chicken broth, we have a billion pounds of potatoes, what could go wrong?

I peel the potatoes using Dave’s nifty peeler, rather than a paring knife. I like the paring knife. I’m good with the paring knife. When it comes to peelers, I have nightmares about peeling the skin off my fingers. I have no idea how many potatoes I peeled, but using the peeler was slightly faster than a knife. Yes Dave, you did tell me so.

However, the problem I had with the peeler was that while trying to peel the second half of the potato, the already-peeled part I was holding on to became slippery. About half of the potatoes went flying into the sink at some point. At this point, I decide I hate peeling potatoes. I can’t wait to finish. But the pot doesn’t look like there’s enough in it, so I peel up probably eight more poor-excuse-for-spuds.

Around Christmas, Dave bought a potato ricer. I admit, I scoffed at first. I like my potatoes whipped so I can eat them with a straw. But after several rounds of garlic mashed potatoes, I conceded defeat. This is the coolest invention ever.

I load up the ricer and attempt to smash my own spuds. Magic! I load it up a second time. By now, I figure I’m doing something wrong. My hands hurt. I give up. So part of the potatoes are mashed. I eat these for lunch.

The recipe for the soup I was looking at said using mashed potatoes is good. But my hands hurt, so I pack it in. I’ll follow a different recipe that says to just mash the potatoes as the soup cooks. I like this idea better. I also get this brilliant idea to take pictures and chronicle the rest of the event.

Dave likes to watch YouTube videos of Gordon Ramsay doing his thing. There are several good reasons for this – like giving Dave a good idea what each step will look like. Personally, I don’t have the kind of dedication he does, and I end up watching this:

Cars and building things are more interesting to me than cooking. It’s just how I am. And these guys are hilarious.

Next up! Frying bacon, garlic, and onions. So, do I fry the bacon first, then throw in the onions and garlic? Or do I do the garlic and onions first, then try to get the bacon in there? Or should I just use separate pans? I decide on frying the bacon first. I hit the fridge and grab the package of bacon. Bacon Shadow, it’s called. I still don’t know what a bacon shadow would be, or what this is supposed to mean, but I open it up and try to take out a piece of bacon. It falls apart. I try again. It falls apart. Again. I take half of the bacon at once, thinking I’ll break it up and fry it in smaller pieces.

Now, I didn’t take the top half of the bacon stack, or the bottom half. I took the left half of the bacon. It just fell apart that way. I’m losing faith in the Bacon Shadow. So I chop up the left half, throw the right half back in the fridge for Dave to be surprised later, and fry it up.

As the bacon is frying, I chop up about six cloves of garlic and two onions. They’re small. When the bacon looks like it needs it, I try to flip the bits over, but the grease is splattering. If there’s one thing that scares me as much as bees and spiders, it’s spitting bacon grease. I move it over to a cold burner and wait a couple seconds. There sure is a lot of grease. I panic. I don’t want all that grease in my onions and garlic and soup. I try to drain the grease into a cup, but the bacon keeps falling in. To fix this, I move all the bacon into a different bowl and then dump, then I move the bacon back to the pan, throw in the onions and garlic, and turn the burner back on. Now there isn’t enough grease. There is, however, a big bottle of garlic-flavoured olive oil. Since I don’t think I have enough garlic anyway, I use this. Everything fries happily. The smell makes me hungry.

The Pan Mixture is almost done frying – then I remember there’s celery in the fridge. The celery is sad and tired. And there are only four stalks. I feel kind of bad for it, but I chop it up and throw it in the pan. Now I’ve over-done the onions. I stare at it and hope Dave doesn’t notice.

Meanwhile, there’s a pot full of potatoes. Some are mashed, some are not. I decide not to mash the rest – partially because I like chunks of potato in my soup and partially because I’m worried I’ll end up wrecking Dave’s potato ricer and that will be the end of those lovely garlic mashed potatoes. So I dump in the chicken broth. There’s just over two cups of it. I give it a quick stir and decide that when I add the milk, it’ll be too runny. Throw in two handfuls of flour (I don’t measure things most of the time), whisk, dump in. This is now looking not too bad.

At this point, I get a very important phone call about a possible job in India. I wander around, talking on the phone, occasionally stirring the pot. I get off the phone and realise I haven’t added any spices.

Dave loves spices. He has a pretty decent collection of them. There’s only one problem. We procrastinate. And that means we haven’t labelled the spice jars yet. Dave knows his spices. I can’t tell the difference between mustard powder and curry powder until I stick my nose in and inhale deeply. Please, don’t try that at home. Anyway! I added a liberal dose of thyme – again, no idea because I never measure my ingredients. I think it was about four tablespoons though. Then there was some salt, some pepper, and bay leaves.

Side note: I love bay leaves. Not so much for their taste, as for fishing them out of a pot and screaming foliage! at Dave. And I tell him about how when I was a child, after my dad finished raking the leaves up, I’d jump in them. And Dad would pull me out and beat out the flames. (This, of course, is an Emo Phillips joke.)

And the soup does it’s thing. It thickens nicely, it looks delicious, and I have absolutely no bread to go with it. A nice loaf of sourdough would have been perfect. Alas.

I let the soup do it’s thing for a while longer, until Dave gets home. Naturally, he is surprised that I have cooked dinner. I recount to him everything that I’ve done and insist he add whatever extra spices he thinks are important. For future pots of soup, I now know to add a bit of lemon juice, white pepper, and more thyme.

I didn’t bother taking a picture of what the soup looked like when it was put into a bowl, because it looked exactly the same as it did in the pot.

Also, missing from this feature: I didn’t review any beer. I think I had a can of Coke.

Verdict: Delicious! I even love my potato soup! Potato soup is fool proof, any idiot can make it!