| I made "Grandma Soup" yesterday, and it is/was delicious. I was sooo proud of my first-ever on-my-own soup-making extravaganza, I had to post this fact on the Xanga page I neglect with any other information. *Grandma Soup is not made OF grandma, but is simply the soup she made/makes all the time when we came/come over. It's actually quite easy and fun to make: Boil a large pot of water. LARGE pot of water.
While you're waiting for the water to boil, wash and chop up a bunch of carrots, and the equivalent of celery. Include some of the inner celery leaves for extra presentation points.
When the water begins to boil, turn it down to low heat (on my knob, a "3" or maybe "4"), and throw in 3 beef bouillion cubes. Add the carrots and celery if they're done being chopped, or add as much as you have. No rush - the stuff has to simmer for almost 2 hours.
Roll about a pound (about 0.5 kg) of raw ground beef into meatballs, and sprinkle/roll in pepper/salt/other seasonings of your choice. I'm still new to this, but grandma says you can mix the meatballs with some egg and flour to get them to stick better - I however, must have amazing meatball-rolling skillz, because mine stayed together quite well without it. Plop them carefully into the cauldron as well. Apparently some people brown their hamburger first, but that takes more time and more pans to wash, and maybe that's why their meatballs aren't staying together. (so there!)
Add some salt and pepper to the soup. It's anyone's guess how much. Taste it. You can always add more later.
Let it simmer on low for forever, maybe stirring it impatiently every once in a while.
If you get bored after 10 minutes like me, chop up some more carrot/celery, and/or rummage through your mom's spice drawer to see if she has any parsley. Nope. Then look through all the rest of her spices, wondering if any of them would be good in soup ("tarragon leaves? ground ginger?"), and then decide not to risk it - this time.
Keep letting it simmer. Somewhere between 1 & 1/2 hours to 2 hours. Near the end - maybe 10 to 15 minutes before you guess it'll be ready, add some noodles or rice for some extra substance. When it looks ready, taste-test it, and have yerself a bowl of soup or two. Then realize that you're going to have some serious fridge-rearranging in order to fit all the extra soup in there, even after you finally manage to find enough containers (in my case, old margarine containers, ice cream containers, etc.) to fit it all in! :) |
