The Rumbly Tummy: Soup, beautiful soup!

I love making soup. Have I told you that before?

Oh...I guess I have.

Well, anyway, my latest creation turned out so well I felt compelled to share it with you, so that you, in turn, would be compelled to make it yourself. Cuz it's damned good, friends. And healthy. And addictive.

D, like many men, is programmed to only shop in bulk. This means he buys entire trays of chicken and dumps them in the freezer, without separating them first. Which means I end up thawing 6-8 giant bone-in breasts at once. I am not a big chicken fan to begin with, and so I season and roast half of Chickie Chick for supper and lunches, and have to be creative with the other half. And this, my friends, usually means SOUP, glorious soup!

As I surveyed the frozen Chickie triplets on the counter, wishing yet again that someone would invent a way to prepare raw meat without actually having to touch it, my inner chef nudged me.

"Hey," she whispered, "it's all rotten and rainy out. Don't you feel like some nice, hot chicken soup? You know, like Nana used to make? With noodles and stuff?"

I made a frowny "Hmmmm" face and looked outside. It was a gross, damp day. The sky was the colour of old socks and the last brave clumps of snow were losing a valiant battle against the mud. Soup, eh?

"Plus," continued Inner Chef, "you can just slide that nasty raw chicken into the pot. You won't even have to touch it."

Inner Chef always knows how to convince me. So that, dear reader, is what I did, along with carrots, onion, garlic, celery and a bay leaf or two. Plus salt and pepper. Plus ginger and lemon. And I simmered the heck out of it for about an hour, until the chicken started to pop off the bone nicely.

Once the broth was done and Chickie was cooked, I strained everything and began to rummage, slice and dice. This is what I came up with:
- 1 onion, roughly chopped
- 2 carrots, thickly sliced
- 3 ribs celery, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 hunk of fresh ginger, thickly sliced

I threw all that chopped up goodness in my soup pot and sauted it in about two tablespoons of coconut oil, my new favourite cooking tool. It smells and tastes divine, is supposed to be antibacterial and you can rub it on your chapped winter hands afterward.

The smells that filled my kitchen were indescribably lovely. Inner Chef agreed. And pointed to my spice cabinet. "Forget the noodles. That coconut makes me want turmeric. And curry. And cumin. And lots of it!"

The measurements went something like this:
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1 dash cayenne powder

I stirred that into the veggies for about a minute, until the fragrances became so heady that I almost fainted into my soup pot from sheer bliss. I topped everything up with the broth and a bit of water, giving myself an accidental curried facial. Then I checked the cupboards.

Red lentils?
"Ooh, yeah," purred Inner Chef.
Wild rice?
"Why the hell not?" said Inner Chef.
Coconut milk?
"I thought you'd never ask," sighed Inner Chef.

And so my coconut curry chicken soup was born. Topped with lime, chopped green onion and cilantro, it's dreamy. I served it over basmati rice for supper and even D, an avowed anti-curry-ite, ate it and approved.

It's incredible that something as disgusting as raw Chickie can turn into something so profoundly yummy. Thanks, Inner Chef. And thanks, Chickie.

PS: I ate it all before I thought to take a photo, but this image is pretty close, if you don't count the noodles.

Spring has Sprung...

There were four sure-fire ways to confirm that spring had arrived when I lived in Waterloo: the gradual disappearance of the giant mountain of snow (also known as Mount Hussey - thanks Muffy!) in the SunLife Financial parking lot; discovering the many “treasures” my dog deposited on my lawn throughout the winter; the reopening of the local Dairy Queen; and the appearance of shorts-clad university students on their front lawns, along with living room couches, boom boxes and coolers.

The harbingers of spring are a bit different, but no less welcome here in the Bruce. Watching saucy robins bob around the lawns and trees is always a happy sign of warmer weather in both the city and the country, but up here you get the added bonus of sighting vultures, kingbirds, herons, kingfishers and goldfinches. It's a birdy-nerdy's paradise.

Nature walks are also more of a treat in the country at this time of year. I’m fascinated by the carpet of bluebells that has appeared in my in-laws’ south pasture - the only other place I've seen that is in Ireland. Down in the private lanes of Tout’s grove (D says the snootier cottagers live there), shy periwinkle flowers and their waxy green leaves peep out at me from under piles of leaves. My brother-in-law’s backyard in Blair’s Grove is a serene ocean of white, blanketed with thousands of trilliums.

I'm a girl who likes to follow her nose. In another life, I think I could have been a perfume maker or tester; I absolutely love smelling nice things. Down by the lake right now, there's a gorgeous aroma of poplar in the air that could be bottled and sold as an anti-depressant. I love walking under those sinewy old trees as their fuzzy catkins drop down on my head like scented confetti.

Back at Someday, the Pine river has woken up; we can hear it rushing over the rocks on these still, spring nights. D and I have had several shore-side discussions about whether the groups of fish that wriggle languidly around in the shallows are edible, but we haven’t tried to find out yet. For now, we’re content to hike through the woods to the edges of the riverbank and spy on their afternoon spawning parties. They swim together near the shore, so thick you could practically walk on them. I think they're trout but D is convinced they're "suckers," whatever that is.

I used to enjoy springtime walks around my established gardens in Waterloo to note the earliest flowers: violets, sweet woodruff, crocuses. I’m still somewhat wistful for my old garden stomping grounds, but there's a certain charm to exploring Someday to see what’s coming up in all the unfamiliar soil. Did any of the bulbs I planted last fall escape the squirrel feasts? And what the heck are those droopy, freckled flowers that appeared seemingly overnight in the kitchen garden?

A blanket of snowdrops surprised me around the southwest corner of the house in April, rosy pink nubs of rhubarb have poked their heads out (I still can’t believe I’m the proud owner of four patches), and some kind soul planted lots of sweet woodruff and dozens of columbines everywhere, which makes me feel more at home. Last week I was delighted to discover wild violets springing up all over the lawn. When the sun warms them and they release their delicate fragrance, it’s like breathing in a benediction. They are my favourite flowers next to freesia.

Of course, to offset the delicious scents, there’s also the occasional whiff of manure that wafts over to Someday on the spring breezes. It took me several days before I realized I didn’t need to keep checking the bottoms of my shoes; “fresh air” is the norm up here now that the farmers are "back on the land," as they say. The unmistakable tang of run-over skunk is back, too, and if that isn’t a sure sign of spring, I don’t know what is.

But the funny thing is that where I used to wrinkle my nose at the smell of diesel fumes from the buses that roared up and down Moore Ave in Waterloo, or the sporadic smell of the dump that drifted down when the wind was west, the springtime country aromas don’t bother me. They are all a part of living in the Bruce, and are quickly becoming as homey and familiar as all the other harbingers of spring at Someday.

Man, oh man...I love spring.