The leeks are all ugly. They've been in the crisper too long and they are coming apart. Their outsides are slimy and gross. One is tempted to toss them out.
Denver is a city that is a mile up in the air, where flat earth of the flatlands is one mile up in the air, then the mountains start going up even higher.
We do grow leeks here but we cannot have leeks growing all over the place up on this mesa up here so most are brought in. Mostly by truck and sometimes by air and in leek emergencies we use the Leek Emergency Pulley System, as you might guess, a system of ropes and pulleys and buckets filled with bundles of leeks from the lowlands, a mile lower than our own prairies. But that's only for leek emergencies. Usually we just keep them long as we can even as they start going off. Like this one did. And the other two.
In these small ways we suffer so for the sake of environmental conservation.
Know how you put cut potatoes in water to prevent the surface starch from oxidizing?
I want the starch this time, but I do not want the water.
What to do?
Let the potatoes soak in the broth that I'll use for the soup. Ta-daaaa.
"You're a genie ass."
I know, right?
I would add cream but my cream is old so I discarded it and used sour cream instead.
I smelled the actual cream and it doesn't smell sour, it just hardened inside as sour cream does. But I still don't trust this excellent dairy product. It changed somehow and I don't know into what. What, do I look like a chemist over here? All that expensive cream has to go. Too bad.
And use commercial sour cream instead. That's just as old.
That's how stupid we are over here. I'm American. Sue me.
Zipped with an emersion blender.
It has a speed dial on it that goes to eleven. Like this:
b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z
b-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-z
b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z
b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z
b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z
b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z b-u-u-u-u-u-u-z
B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z
B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z
B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z
B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z
B-U-U-U-U-U-U-Z. Done.
But I saved some lumps!
Nobody like things perfectly smooth.
Taste-tested.
* cumin
* cinnamon
* nutmeg
Now, this right here is a mistake. The cumin especially but other spices not listed here are started first in oil to get them going. They are not added at the end as I am doing here. To a person from the honorable continent of India with their incredible experience with these spices, this treatment of spices that I am doing, adding at the end as flavor elements, to adjust to the food already cooking, straight from their jars and not previously activated is a clear and basic violation of spice practices and national spice ethics. I could get kicked out of India for this.
But I don't care. La la la. I am American. Sue me.
Normally I would toast this bread under the broiler or in a pan, but this bread is old and a bit stale and that works too. For me. Right now.
This is only one reason why I'd be kicked out from proper cooking school.
I simply cannot be reformed from laziness.
Kicked out of India and kicked out of proper cooking school. How am I to survive?
"Why did you add those tomatoes?"
To have red. Because the carton of Italian tomatoes is already opened and I must use them or waste them. They cost a fortune and I don't want to waste that.
"Then why did you buy them?"
Because they say "contains: tomatoes" and everything else has all kind of crap in them, like herbs and alliums that I don't want and things that I don't even know what it is like chemicals. Do I look like a professional chemist over here? They load all that in those tins. You should read them some time. They are horrible. Tomato season is dead. D.E.D. Dead. And good ripe tomatoes cost a fortune anyway, so what if I pay another fortune for these, during these hard times of ripe tomato seasonal famine.
I was just now struck with epiphany.
I watched a million videos on growing vegetables hydroponically. Another million videos on farmer market gardening. Another million videos on homesteading. Another million videos on sustainable natural gardening. Another million videos on power gardening.
I learned something essential; 1) I watch too many videos. 2) all those people talk too much. Way too much. Honestly, they are boring as H. E. Double garden hoes. Yakkity-yakkity-yakkity-yak, Jesus, it's straight up flow of consciousness with zero apparent editing. Every story begins two or three steps before the actual story and branches out to dozens, scores, hundreds of tangental threads, each video reading like Cien Años del Soledad. Their minds are solid. Their thinking is clear. But, Lord, do they ramble.
The hydroponic guys do weird things with fish as part of their recycling. I do not like all those fish swimming around in a fifty-five gallon drums It's unnatural.
They don't even make it like an aquarium.
No sense of aesthetics.
They control the amount and duration of light, they control all nutrients, they control water, they control microbial environment. So why do their tomatoes taste like crap compared with garden tomatoes?
The soil, obviously. The videos show, they keep doing things that are best for the greenhouses and not doing the soil-related things that successful gardeners boast about. That is, make sure that the soil is alive and thriving on both the micro and macro-biological levels; the mushroom mycelium and worms. The soils and the hydroponic liquids are not saturated with micronutrients. Their liquids and their soils are not living.
My epiphany was that I think that I have the answer for greenhouse tomatoes that taste good as garden tomatoes do.
Edit:
Next day. One potato, one leek, one jalapeño, a bit of sour cream, milk, very few spices, bread, turned out to be three mighty fine large hearty meals. The best thing about it besides its convenience and its taste is how easily this goes down and how smoothly it's processed. No sense of movements as food shifts around continuously until it is out, no sounds, no gurgling, no discomfort, no sudden sense of internal pressure, like nothing is happening at all. It is the greatest ease. Nothingness. That's quite incredible following so much discomfort by way of contrast. As if my body is not a churning furnace heating a fermented stew processing bubbling sludge as fuel. Psych! Because that's what it is. This soup make me feel like that's what it isn't. Plus it is delicious. And it is easy.
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