Chicken Noodle Soup (Usually)

Homemade chicken noodle soup is a beautiful thing, though it took me a long time to realize it. I grew up on the Campbell's stuff, and on the rare occasion my mom would make it from scratch, I thought it was inferior to its canned counterpart. Children are weird, I guess.

Apparently I grew out of it, though, because two weekends ago, when I was sick, I woke up in the almost-early-afternoon with a craving for homemade chicken noodle soup. Perhaps it was a part of my so-called "health kick," but even the tornado-noodled Progresso we have stashed in our cupboard didn't seem good enough for what I wanted. So I did a little searching for the most basic chicken noodle soup recipe possible, and found something perfect to build on.

Just a couple of days ago, I made it again, taking advantage of some of the ingredients we now had on hand. It proved once again to be just about the best thing ever. Even if the only non-frozen meat we had was leftover pork roast.

Three Biscotti

I have something to confess: I have a vendetta against butter. I avoid using it as often as possible, and have passed by many a scrumptious-looking cookie recipe because of it. "1/2 cup of butter" on an ingredients list makes me cry inside.

Don't get me wrong. I love buttery things. I've just somehow gotten it into my head that something with little to no butter is a lot healthier than something with lots of butter. I'm not the healthiest eater, not by any means. But lately, I've been trying hard to make steps in the right direction, for both my sake, and the sakes of my roommates, whom I feed at least once a week.

Cue the biscotti. I've never liked biscotti. NEVER. I thought, though, that maybe that was because I'd only ever had the store-bought stuff. After all, I wasn't a big fan of fruit pies until I started making them myself. The fact that I stumbled upon a LiveJournal post about biscotti with absolutely no butter in them whatsoever looked promising. I told you. I have a problem.

Then when I was searching for recipes and found one with a comment that said that real biscotti aren't meant to have butter in them anyway, as it makes them gross after a while, I was finally convinced.

So a week ago, I took advantage of all the nuts, candy canes, and Craisins we had lying around in our cupboard, and made three different types of butter-free biscotti.



I cut my biscotti wider than you're supposed to, and my roommates got into the pumpkin ones before the biscotti could go in for their second round of baking, so I got less than expected. Still, they tasted so amazing! I am officially a biscotti fan.

Braided Cranberry Bread

I will just tell you right now that I don't make up my own recipes. I can sing plenty of songs just fine, but I'm stumped when it comes to writing a tune of my own. Maybe I can change around the lyrics and harmonize instead of singing the melody, but it's still the same song, deep down. The same goes for me and food.

I love cooking food. It's what calms me down and fires me up. I stay awake into the wee hours of the morning, my eyes squinting with exhaustion as I peruse food blogs and try to ignore the stirrings they insight in my stomach.

I also have a particular fondness for photographing my food. That is, when it looks pretty (which isn't as often as I'd like), and when the sunlight is good enough that it can transform my poor little camera into a vessel for greatness. (This translates to me carrying my food outside, or upstairs to strategically place it on my bedroom's wide windowsill.) But I usually don't have much to do with these pictures except post them on Facebook and make my faraway friends jealous.

So the deal is this. I don't know how often I'm going to update this with (hopefully) lovely pictures of food. But I'm going to try, when the sunlight is right and the food gods are in my favor, to post as often as feels right. Sporadic, maybe, but right.

To get ahead of the game, I'm going to post the last few things I made and (somewhat decently) photographed. The first is this delicious Braided Cranberry Bread, which I made back in early December while I was home for winter break.

Old Soul, Odd Bird

You've probably heard somebody remark about old souls before. Maybe somebody's told you that you are one because of some remark you made about black and white movies or a penchant for square dancing. Maybe not. And maybe if somebody did, you thought they were crazy.

Nobody's ever called me an old soul in so many words. The fifties-style apron I wear when I bake has been commented upon. My fondness for cleaning and knitting have been duly noted. I have happily chatted with fellow admirers of Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart.

But as I look at my other opened browser tabs and spy one labeled "How to Clean Tile Grout," I have a niggling suspicion that maybe I'm not just an old soul, but old. The fact that I have been nicknamed "Wife" and "Mother" by various transients and co-inhabitants of my apartment perhaps confirms this. I am the old woman with smooth-backed hands. I go out dancing on Friday nights with a spatula in my kitchen, and we have a wild time. Then I vacuum the floor. Please tidy your room and bundle up warm before you go outside. Don't eat too much butter or you'll die.

This is the role I have adopted in my household, and I like it. Maybe it seems boring, but there's some comfort in being the pseudo-caregiver, the reliably sedentary roommate. There's comfort in curling up on the sofa with a book or knitting needles, dragon scales or yarn balls at my feet. There's a joy in seeing the smiles on my friends' faces after I've served them up something hot and delicious, a certain methodical calm in cleaning up the kitchen afterward.

I'm an old soul and an odd bird, and many other things, I know. I have quiet passions.

I hope, though, that you don't mind me sharing a slice of them with you.