One of my very favorite soups is something I call Italian Meatball Soup. It's basically a minestrone without the cabbage and squash but with meatballs added.
I start with about a quart of water in the kettle.
Add
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can Cannellini beans
1 carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced (or sliced thin)
1-1/2 t instant beef bouillion granules
1 clove garlic (I used dried)
2 T spaghetti seasoning
1 C rotini
3 Johnsonville Italian sausages
Everything goes in the pot at one time. To make the "meatballs", I squeeze the meat out of the sausage casings and roll each little ball in the palm of my hands to make them round. Bring to boil and then simmer at least 45 minutes.
My brother-in-law, Gary asked for the recipe and made it himself, with the following misadventures and results:
Gary’s Misadventure with Italian Meatball Soup Recipe
I put together the Italian Sausage soup recipe you sent me and it was terrific. However, I made a couple adjustments ( actually you could call them tactical errors) when I stopped at the store to pick up the sausage and the cannellini beans. While there I saw the diced tomatoes sitting there on the shelf, so I picked up a small can, even though I had some at home. I had all the other ingredients and decided to make the little meat balls and cook them ahead for Tuesday. About 3:30, I began preparing the soup with the 1 quart of water, the beans, the tomatoes, carrots, garlic and celery. I began heating it all as I started the rotini water.
About six or seven minutes later I realized I had forgotten two ingredients, the bouillon and spaghetti mix. I went to the cupboard and looked through my collection of pre-mixed seasonings and found a packet of Kroger Spaghetti mix. I tore it open and plopped it in the soup, then added the beef bouillon. I mixed it well and let it gain speed to a boil for about three minutes. The rotini was doing well and I pulled it off the fire to make sure I didn’t overcook it. I let it simmer another five minutes and dumped the rotini in and stirred it for a couple minutes.
I took a soup spoon to sample the broth and was I surprised! The broth was hot as a firecracker, not flame hot, but pepper hot. It burned like a five alarm chili recipe, nearly sucking the wind out of me. Not what I had expected. The spices floating through the broth were INTENSE to say the least. Very tasty, but hotter than hell. I quickly poured a cup of water in the soup and prayed for help. I looked at the spaghetti sauce mix, but found no answer for the scalding going on in my mouth, despite my suspicion that someone had laced it with cayenne pepper. The bouillon wouldn’t have been peppered, so I went to the garbage can and picked up the tomato can. On the label, in a pretty celery green banner were the words “with green chilies.” I had not noticed that when I bought them. I have now. I added another cup of water and simmered it another five minutes, tasted it and took a small bowl of it. I was surprised at how I could taste the rich flavors through the pepper searing my tongue. I thought, "Man, Jim would love this!" Most very hot foods are just that, to me, little flavor and a lot of hot. Not this stuff, it was delicious, as it started softening the enamel on my teeth.
I wondered why the flavors were still so strong. I looked at your recipe again and noticed I had overlooked the portion of two T spoons of spaghetti mix; I had dumped the whole contents of the envelope into the soup. I finished my soup and walked out to the mail box to check my mail, the stinging still working on my mouth. It began to subside at the curbside and by the time I got back to the kitchen, my taste buds had calmed down, but still the buzz lingered. I had moved the pot off the fire nearly ten minutes earlier, and I decided I would take another bowl of soup. To my surprised the intensity of the pepper has lessened and, though still potent, was much more tolerable. Great flavor and a nice little zing. People who like hot chili and tacos would probably like this version.
Gary:
What an adventure! And you can still try the "regular" version some time and get yet another treat! My cousin and I often have misadventures like this.
About the tomatoes with chilies: Susan put rotel tomatoes in a cream cheese and sour cream dip and it was terrific. So I got a can of them, thinking they were mildly hot. Wrongo, Dog Breath! I have three cans of them in my pantry that I'm going to donate to Robin since she and Chris like hot stuff. I'm really careful now to be sure the tomatoes are JUST tomatoes! I think the dip was mild because the milk products counteracted the heat.
Glad you could eat your "original" recipe!
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The Old House Comes Down
Mother always wanted me to build a new house where her old one stood. Before I could do that, the old house had to be emptied and removed. The emptying was quite a chore. All those things she saved that she might use some time, and 40 boxes of fabric and yarn.
To make the demolition quicker (and cheaper), we engaged the Eureka Volunteer Fire Department to use the house as a training site and then to burn it down. I didn't go to the actual conflagration, but my kids did and they got some neat pictures of it.
Incidentally, it wasn't out of love of the old place that I didn't go to the burning. It was too early on a Saturday morning.
The Fire Department people were wonderful and I can't possibly thank them enough.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Bug's* First House
My parents lived in the house at 617 N. Webster in Eureka for 34 years, and Mother hated the house the whole time she lived in it. She often said that if she had known how much money Bob had squirreled away, she'd have had a new house.
The old house was not well-built and had not been cared for before my folks moved in. The basement was perpetually wet, the rooms were small and there was an odd one that didn't adapt ttself to any use anyone could think of. The bathroom was 3-1/2 feet walled off of the end of the kitchen. The upstairs had two rooms, sort of, but you had to walk through the first one to get to the second one. The septic system was inadequate and a constant problem.
I inherited the house with her death in 2007 and finally decided to do what she always told me to do, "When I die, I want you to tear down this house and build a new one."
I had looked into the cost of re-modeling the old house, and when I reached $150,000, I decided we might as well build a new one. She liked the houses built by Homeway Homes, and I did, too, except there always seemed to be something awkward about every floor plan. For example, in one design you entered one of the bedrooms from the kitchen. And I don't want a humungous bathroom with a tub with gobs of squirters. I don't want to tie up gobs of floor space in bathrooms.
So the logical decision was to tear the house down and build a new one. It would be Bug's second house.
*Bug was my mother's nickname.
The old house was not well-built and had not been cared for before my folks moved in. The basement was perpetually wet, the rooms were small and there was an odd one that didn't adapt ttself to any use anyone could think of. The bathroom was 3-1/2 feet walled off of the end of the kitchen. The upstairs had two rooms, sort of, but you had to walk through the first one to get to the second one. The septic system was inadequate and a constant problem.
I inherited the house with her death in 2007 and finally decided to do what she always told me to do, "When I die, I want you to tear down this house and build a new one."
I had looked into the cost of re-modeling the old house, and when I reached $150,000, I decided we might as well build a new one. She liked the houses built by Homeway Homes, and I did, too, except there always seemed to be something awkward about every floor plan. For example, in one design you entered one of the bedrooms from the kitchen. And I don't want a humungous bathroom with a tub with gobs of squirters. I don't want to tie up gobs of floor space in bathrooms.
So the logical decision was to tear the house down and build a new one. It would be Bug's second house.
*Bug was my mother's nickname.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Ironing: From the 50s to the Present
I understand that most young people today don’t own and iron and wouldn’t know what to do with one if they had it. I’ve seen people in clothes that should have been ironed and it isn’t a pretty sight. Manufacturers and major stores advertise that their clothes are 100% cotton, and that’s just fine, but all-cotton clothes rarely look pressed when they’re taken from the dryer. Even the most expensive dress shirts look messy without at least a little touch-up on the fronts.
I remember that as a teen (back in the 50s) we all wore cotton skirts that were very full and made to stand out by crinolines, sometimes two or three. My blouses were white shirts from Ship ‘n Shore and they had to be ironed. I decided that I could iron my clothes myself (an act of rebellion on my part – what kid today would think that was daring?) and I learned in a hurry. The trouble was I wasn’t good at planning ahead, and fairly often I would be ironing a blouse or skirt just before going somewhere in it. Mother ranted that I was wasting electricity by heating up the iron for one item. I did some calculations (I’d had physics by that time) and decided that each session was costing $.05. She wasn’t impressed, probably because her real issue was my lack of planning and doing things in an orderly way.
Talk about orderly systems, to get ready to do the ironing, you would lay out each piece on the ironing board and sprinkle it with water contained in a bottle with a sprinkler gadget stuck in the neck, an empty pop bottle was a good choice. The sprinkler gadget had cork around it so it would have a tight fit. Then you would roll each piece up tightly and lay it in the basket. Ideally, by the time you got to ironing, each piece would be uniformly damp and ironing would make the fabric nice and smooth. The biggest problem with this scenario is that I often didn’t want to finish all the ironing at one time. I’d put the dampened but unironed pieces in the refrigerator. If I didn’t, they would develop mold, and NO one wants to deal with mold spots on clothes! Probably half the women in the country had dampened clothes taking up space in their refrigerators.
When we moved into the house in Peoria, there was a trunk in the attic with several odd items. One was a ceramic sprinkler bottle in the shape of a Chinaman and a poem was on a card around his neck: “More better sprinkle bottle way Than squirt through teethie all the day.”
When I got married, I was faced with ironing a pair of men’s cotton pants. Hoo boy! Where should I begin? Rebellion be damned, I solved the problem by walking two blocks to Mother’s house and having her show me how to do it.
In the 60s clothes began to be made of blended fabrics, mostly nylon and cotton, but sometimes rayon and cotton. And we were blessed with a wonderful invention: the steam iron! To top it off, someone started producing spray starch!! At last the refrigerator was free of dampened clothes and the whole task was immeasurably easier—especially if you wanted to iron one piece at a time.
Over the years I have learned to enjoy ironing. It’s nice to have a job that is actually, really completed. Almost everything in housekeeping is never-ending and you can’t see any improvement after getting the jobs done. But with ironing, every piece starts out wrinkled and ends up sharp and crisp and hanging on a hanger. If there are 6 shirts to iron, you can rejoice when you get to the end of the 6th one. It offers a sense of accomplishment.
To make it even more enjoyable, I learned that when my kids were little, they stayed away when I was ironing. I think it was too boring for them. But, oh, what peace I had! All alone with my GE steam iron and a stack of ironing that would take me as long as I wanted it to. Janet Evanovich writes that Stephanie Plum’s mother ironed when she was anxious. Sometimes she ironed the same shirt over and over and over. I’ve never gotten that bad, because I always have plenty of things to iron, and if I weren’t so busy on the computer, I might even get caught up.
I remember that as a teen (back in the 50s) we all wore cotton skirts that were very full and made to stand out by crinolines, sometimes two or three. My blouses were white shirts from Ship ‘n Shore and they had to be ironed. I decided that I could iron my clothes myself (an act of rebellion on my part – what kid today would think that was daring?) and I learned in a hurry. The trouble was I wasn’t good at planning ahead, and fairly often I would be ironing a blouse or skirt just before going somewhere in it. Mother ranted that I was wasting electricity by heating up the iron for one item. I did some calculations (I’d had physics by that time) and decided that each session was costing $.05. She wasn’t impressed, probably because her real issue was my lack of planning and doing things in an orderly way.
Talk about orderly systems, to get ready to do the ironing, you would lay out each piece on the ironing board and sprinkle it with water contained in a bottle with a sprinkler gadget stuck in the neck, an empty pop bottle was a good choice. The sprinkler gadget had cork around it so it would have a tight fit. Then you would roll each piece up tightly and lay it in the basket. Ideally, by the time you got to ironing, each piece would be uniformly damp and ironing would make the fabric nice and smooth. The biggest problem with this scenario is that I often didn’t want to finish all the ironing at one time. I’d put the dampened but unironed pieces in the refrigerator. If I didn’t, they would develop mold, and NO one wants to deal with mold spots on clothes! Probably half the women in the country had dampened clothes taking up space in their refrigerators.
When we moved into the house in Peoria, there was a trunk in the attic with several odd items. One was a ceramic sprinkler bottle in the shape of a Chinaman and a poem was on a card around his neck: “More better sprinkle bottle way Than squirt through teethie all the day.”
When I got married, I was faced with ironing a pair of men’s cotton pants. Hoo boy! Where should I begin? Rebellion be damned, I solved the problem by walking two blocks to Mother’s house and having her show me how to do it.
In the 60s clothes began to be made of blended fabrics, mostly nylon and cotton, but sometimes rayon and cotton. And we were blessed with a wonderful invention: the steam iron! To top it off, someone started producing spray starch!! At last the refrigerator was free of dampened clothes and the whole task was immeasurably easier—especially if you wanted to iron one piece at a time.
Over the years I have learned to enjoy ironing. It’s nice to have a job that is actually, really completed. Almost everything in housekeeping is never-ending and you can’t see any improvement after getting the jobs done. But with ironing, every piece starts out wrinkled and ends up sharp and crisp and hanging on a hanger. If there are 6 shirts to iron, you can rejoice when you get to the end of the 6th one. It offers a sense of accomplishment.
To make it even more enjoyable, I learned that when my kids were little, they stayed away when I was ironing. I think it was too boring for them. But, oh, what peace I had! All alone with my GE steam iron and a stack of ironing that would take me as long as I wanted it to. Janet Evanovich writes that Stephanie Plum’s mother ironed when she was anxious. Sometimes she ironed the same shirt over and over and over. I’ve never gotten that bad, because I always have plenty of things to iron, and if I weren’t so busy on the computer, I might even get caught up.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Old Maytag
I dearly love my automatic washer and wouldn’t give it up unless absolutely forced to do so. But there were some perks to doing the wash in the “old fashioned” way.
Mother had a Maytag wringer washer when we lived in Peoria in 1952. We had an apartment, and since there were two other apartments in the building, we were assigned a wash day. I believe our day was Monday. During the school year Mother did all the wash herself, but come summer I was involved, whether I wanted to be or not. The basement was dark, as I recall, and the outdoor clothes lines were stretched across a miniscule yard in back of our apartment house. One of my jobs was to take a wet rag and wash down each line to make sure there were no bird leavings or aluminum corrosion to soil the clothes. In the winter the clothes were hung on aluminum lines in the basement, and that was handier, but you couldn’t leave clothes hanging there because the other tenants would be using them the next day.
My Mother was very picky about how things were hung on the lines. I learned that you put three clothes pins across the top of towels so they didn’t get sway-backed. And handkerchiefs were folded in half and hung tightly by the corners so they’d be easier to iron. Shirts were hung by the tails, and the tails of T-shirts were looped over the line for about 4 inches so you didn’t have “ears” on the bottoms of the shirts.
When we moved to a bigger apartment in what had once been a large house, we didn’t have laundry privileges in the basement. Our Maytag sat in the corner of the kitchen which had once been a large bedroom. On laundry day it was pulled out and filled with water. We had the attic for storage, and we’d lug the galvanized tubs from the attic and set them on milk crates for the two rinses that were mandatory. The house had a back stairway, so we could take the wet clothes to the back yard in good weather. When it was raining or cold, we hung the clothes on lines in the attic. At least we didn’t have to rush to get the clothes taken down.
We moved to a house in 1954 and had the basement to ourselves. The Maytag sat in a corner waiting patiently for wash day which could now be any day of the week. Mother had a rule of thumb: If the weather was good on Monday, it would be raining on Friday…and vice versa. It never seemed to fail.
Father strung up sturdy aluminum lines in the back yard and in one side of the basement. We’d hang the things that took longest to dry on the farthest back lines. As thinner things dried, we’d take them down so we’d have room for more wash.
After I was married, I used laundromats for umpteen years. In 1973 my husband and I and three children moved back into that house in Peoria. Father had bought Mother an automatic washer, but she took it with her when they moved to the farm. The old Maytag was there, and I knew how to use it. For several months I had a weekly date with her.
There were a lot of advantages to old fashioned washday. For one thing, it was all over in a single day. You started with hot water in the Maytag and cold water in the rinse tubs. White things went in first while the water was hot and clean. When the first load was through swishing, you’d put them through the wringer into the first rinse and load the washer up with load number 2. While #2 was swishing, you’d plunge the clothes up and down in the water and then put them through the wringer into the third rinse. As soon as they were rinsed, you’d wring them into a plastic-lined bushel basket, and take them to the lines to be hung up. When you got back, load #2 would be ready to go into the rinse. Each load took about 20 minutes and we usually had 6 or so loads.
The last load was reserved for rugs and rags. Once it was on the line, you had to empty the washer and rinse tubs, mop up the water on the floor, put things away and wait until it was time to take the clothes off the lines. Nothing smelled as sweet as clothes dried on outdoor clothes lines!
I’ve often thought I would like to do my wash the old fashioned way again, just for the fun of it. When wash day was over, there was a feeling of satisfaction that I don’t get from my automatic washer. I think Mother’s old Maytag is in the barn at the farm, all covered with years of dust. I wonder if it still runs.
Mother had a Maytag wringer washer when we lived in Peoria in 1952. We had an apartment, and since there were two other apartments in the building, we were assigned a wash day. I believe our day was Monday. During the school year Mother did all the wash herself, but come summer I was involved, whether I wanted to be or not. The basement was dark, as I recall, and the outdoor clothes lines were stretched across a miniscule yard in back of our apartment house. One of my jobs was to take a wet rag and wash down each line to make sure there were no bird leavings or aluminum corrosion to soil the clothes. In the winter the clothes were hung on aluminum lines in the basement, and that was handier, but you couldn’t leave clothes hanging there because the other tenants would be using them the next day.
My Mother was very picky about how things were hung on the lines. I learned that you put three clothes pins across the top of towels so they didn’t get sway-backed. And handkerchiefs were folded in half and hung tightly by the corners so they’d be easier to iron. Shirts were hung by the tails, and the tails of T-shirts were looped over the line for about 4 inches so you didn’t have “ears” on the bottoms of the shirts.
When we moved to a bigger apartment in what had once been a large house, we didn’t have laundry privileges in the basement. Our Maytag sat in the corner of the kitchen which had once been a large bedroom. On laundry day it was pulled out and filled with water. We had the attic for storage, and we’d lug the galvanized tubs from the attic and set them on milk crates for the two rinses that were mandatory. The house had a back stairway, so we could take the wet clothes to the back yard in good weather. When it was raining or cold, we hung the clothes on lines in the attic. At least we didn’t have to rush to get the clothes taken down.
We moved to a house in 1954 and had the basement to ourselves. The Maytag sat in a corner waiting patiently for wash day which could now be any day of the week. Mother had a rule of thumb: If the weather was good on Monday, it would be raining on Friday…and vice versa. It never seemed to fail.
Father strung up sturdy aluminum lines in the back yard and in one side of the basement. We’d hang the things that took longest to dry on the farthest back lines. As thinner things dried, we’d take them down so we’d have room for more wash.
After I was married, I used laundromats for umpteen years. In 1973 my husband and I and three children moved back into that house in Peoria. Father had bought Mother an automatic washer, but she took it with her when they moved to the farm. The old Maytag was there, and I knew how to use it. For several months I had a weekly date with her.
There were a lot of advantages to old fashioned washday. For one thing, it was all over in a single day. You started with hot water in the Maytag and cold water in the rinse tubs. White things went in first while the water was hot and clean. When the first load was through swishing, you’d put them through the wringer into the first rinse and load the washer up with load number 2. While #2 was swishing, you’d plunge the clothes up and down in the water and then put them through the wringer into the third rinse. As soon as they were rinsed, you’d wring them into a plastic-lined bushel basket, and take them to the lines to be hung up. When you got back, load #2 would be ready to go into the rinse. Each load took about 20 minutes and we usually had 6 or so loads.
The last load was reserved for rugs and rags. Once it was on the line, you had to empty the washer and rinse tubs, mop up the water on the floor, put things away and wait until it was time to take the clothes off the lines. Nothing smelled as sweet as clothes dried on outdoor clothes lines!
I’ve often thought I would like to do my wash the old fashioned way again, just for the fun of it. When wash day was over, there was a feeling of satisfaction that I don’t get from my automatic washer. I think Mother’s old Maytag is in the barn at the farm, all covered with years of dust. I wonder if it still runs.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Does It Dissolve or Float?
My hubby keeps me laughing. I think the quality I have always liked most about him is his sense of humor.
Last night he had insomnia. This morning I asked him what time he got to sleep and he said it was after 3:30. About 3:15 he got up and came down to the kitchen for some milk. He said, "I found out one thing. Nutmeg does not dissolve. It just floats on top of the milk no matter how much you stir."
And that reminded me of the time we came home one evening and found pepper and sawdust (I think it was) floating in water in the bathroom sink . Puzzled, we asked the girls who had done it, and found out it was Robin. "I wanted to see if pepper and sawdust would float."
As they say, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.
Last night he had insomnia. This morning I asked him what time he got to sleep and he said it was after 3:30. About 3:15 he got up and came down to the kitchen for some milk. He said, "I found out one thing. Nutmeg does not dissolve. It just floats on top of the milk no matter how much you stir."
And that reminded me of the time we came home one evening and found pepper and sawdust (I think it was) floating in water in the bathroom sink . Puzzled, we asked the girls who had done it, and found out it was Robin. "I wanted to see if pepper and sawdust would float."
As they say, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Those little notes that accumulate beside the telephone are tantalizing. Every once in awhile the stack gets to unruly proportions and I decide to thin it out. Sometimes I find notes about things I was supposed to have done....weeks or even months ago. Ooops!
Then there are the cryptic ones that leave me puzzled.
In my latest purge I came across one that said "366 E. Hickory Kan 815 932 8124." I couldn't think of any contact I had had with Kansas in the past couple of months. I was about to add the note to the "important but unknown" stack when I remembered that you can do a reverse search of phone numbers on the Internet.
Wonderful! Turns out it wasn't Kansas; it was Kankakee, and the note referred to the address and phone number of a Catholic school. I must have been doing an article for the News Bulletin and jotted the information down so I could include it in the story.
Mystery solved. Note tossed in the circular file. Life is good.
Then there are the cryptic ones that leave me puzzled.
In my latest purge I came across one that said "366 E. Hickory Kan 815 932 8124." I couldn't think of any contact I had had with Kansas in the past couple of months. I was about to add the note to the "important but unknown" stack when I remembered that you can do a reverse search of phone numbers on the Internet.
Wonderful! Turns out it wasn't Kansas; it was Kankakee, and the note referred to the address and phone number of a Catholic school. I must have been doing an article for the News Bulletin and jotted the information down so I could include it in the story.
Mystery solved. Note tossed in the circular file. Life is good.
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