Sunday, September 27, 2009

if at first you don't succeed, perhaps you should quit while you're ahead



I have a little bit of a thing for tomato soup. I always love it. Always. Except Campbell's because, like mac and cheese, that's not real food. My Grandma makes the best tomato soup ever. Ever. Sometimes she cans it and when we lived nearer I could usually charm her out a few jars. Yesterday I decided to tackle my own version. I found a recipe I was excited about, made a few modifications to make it more like Grandma's and off I went.  It certainly wasn't rocket science. This is where one of my character flaws come into play. While I am super at following directions I don't actually want to read them if I don't have to, and in this case had only sort of skimmed. So I skipped a step. Just a little one. The 'saute the hard vegetables' one before combining into soup. No biggie I thought, because unlike the recipe, I was simmering my creation all afternoon in the crock pot. Not quite as good but definitely close enough for a first go around. Mmm-hmm. Here's where problem #2 comes into play. My crock pot is much like it's owner, completely erratic and unpredictable. Sometimes it can cook a chicken in 90 minutes and sometimes you can simmer potatoes all day and still have them end up crunchy. For the most part I have learned to work within these parameter's but there is definitely a larger margin of error than with your average crock pot. After several hours of simmering the carrots were still just a bit too hard to mash into soup pulp with my trusty hand blender. I was not daunted. I pulled out my fancy blender. I don't have a food processor for unknown reasons and thus use the fancy blender in it's place. My plan was to blend in batches with the fancy blender producing the smooth, soup-like texture for which I was aiming. Batch #1 exploded boiling hot soup all over me and everything else. Awesome. Obviously I had not placed the lid on tightly. So stupid, but easily remedied. Batch #2 exploded boiling soup all over me and everything else. Sigh. Hmm, perhaps I was trying to blend too much all at once? Batch #3 (Yup, I did it a third time) also exploded boiling soup all over me and everything else. Apparently there is something about heat and steam that the the lid of the fancy blender objects to and thus refuses to seal. At that point I justifiably threw in the towel. I mean, seriously, how could I not? We ate our delicious soup with a little more texture than I had planned and I spent quite a while scrubbing tomato soup off the white grout between the white tiles of my kitchen. This is why I need dark granite in my kitchen.

5 comments:

Holly Lefevre said...

I had a similar kitchen experience recently invovling apples and brown rice syrup, not tomatoes, but nothing exploded (YIKES!), it just oozed. I feel you pain!
Holly @ 504 Main

Reluctant Nomad said...

I don't have a food processor either and use my fancy blender for these tasks too. The trick with hot soup is that you have to leave the center part out of the blender lid or else it will explode (as you know). I usually cover it with a rag so that it doesn't splash all over me. Don't give up! Did you use a vegetable or a chicken stock as the base?

Reluctant Nomad said...

PS: I heart tomato soup

Angie said...

chicken this time but just because that's what I hade made up

Amber said...

Such a funny story, made my sides hurt during my break from unpacking. You can use my food processer anytime.