Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!

For one brief shining moment, I am reaping the benefits of forethought. It's an unfamiliar feeling to me. However, during my charlie-foxtrot of a morning, even though I had about 8,000 unwashed dishes and a clogged sink going on in my tiny galley kitchen, I threw the stuff for pasta fagioli in my crock pot.

Later, after conspicuous bragging on Facebook, someone asked me for the recipe, and since I live to brag and please, here you go.

Like most of America, I was introduced to pasta fagioli by that place that does unlimited soup/salad/breadsticks. It makes sense that this friendly presentation was one of the first things I attempted when I first tried working with dried beans. I've cooked it a lot, and I think I've got a pretty good, in no way claiming to be authentic, version.

I start with soaking a cup of dried Great White Northern beans overnight. I know Cooks Illustrated and Alton Brown now say you don't have to soak them, but considering the area I live in and the likely rate of non-turnover in the way of dried beans, I find it prudent.

I started with the soaked, undrained beans in the bottom of my crockpot. Today I added a rind of Parmesan, one chopped onion, one enormous peeled and diced carrot, one diced red bell pepper, and one handful of chopped mushrooms. I realize my veggies may be more minestrone-like, but there is worse to come. Deal with it. I added a jar of Newman's Sockarooni sauce, and then poured a little veggie broth into the jar to shake and then poured that in. I added more veggie broth (I think ending up at 3 cups) and a few tablespoons of prepared pesto.

I put the whole shebang on low and left for six hours. Upon my return, I added a package of frozen chopped spinach, some salt and half a veggie bouillon cube. I like my fazool to be fairly thick and stew-like. Then I left again for about two hours.

I came back with a pizza for my ungrateful, anti-legume spawn, and put on a pot of SALTED water for pasta (in my case, two partial boxes of white and whole-wheat macaroni.) Did I mention the pasta was cooked in SALTED water? I used to never add salt to the water for pasta. When I finally did, I was like, HOLY SHIT, this stuff has a taste! Hi, Department of the Obvious checking in.

Another side note: the first few times I made pasta fagioli, I cooked the pasta in the soup. Bleah. Unless you have a ravening horde to feed and no chance of leftovers, cook the pasta separately. Otherwise you end up with a really thick soup full of pasta that is disintegrating apace with your lack of interest in eating it.

Anyway, buen provecho! Bon appétit! Slainte! Opa! YOLO!

1 cup dry white beans, such as great northern beans, rinsed and looked over (yes, sometimes there are rocks in there)
water to cover
1 finely chopped onion
1 peeled and diced huge carrot, or two normal carrots
1 de-seeded red, yellow, or orange bell pepper. Don't bother with the green ones.
about 8 oz mushrooms, chopped
1 jar of marinara sauce (I like Newman's Sockarooni)
1 32 oz box of vegetable or chicken broth (I was experimenting with making a vegetarian version for my niece's visit)
3 tablespoons prepared pesto
1 (or more, I'm not your parole officer) Parmesan rind

1 10 oz package frozen chopped spinach
1/2 cube of vegetarian bouillon
salt to taste




water salted to the level of broth
the equivalent of a pound of small, dried pasta. (I am always using up leftovers, and I think the varied shapes are the culinary equivalent of Shabby Chic. Don't try to disabuse me of this notion.)

Fresh-grated Parmesan

Put the first group of ingredients in the crock pot, willy-nilly. Cook on low for 6-8 hours (this is a forgiving treatment.) Taste the broth, make sure your beans are tender, and add the next 3 ingredients. Once everything is cooked and flavored to your liking, start the SALTED water for the pasta. Cook pasta per the box & drain. Serve yourself a lovely bowl of pasta covered with soup, with Parmesan flakes melting into the top. Bask in the knowledge that you are a domestic rock star.

Remains of the day

I realized, somewhat late in the day, that today would have been my seventeenth wedding anniversary. We've been separated/divorced for seven years, but this date hit me hard for some reason.

Sometimes I think about our marriage in terms of what remains from it. Obviously and most significantly, there's Crash. I get caught up on stupid stuff, though. I still have a battered metal bowl that we used to always use for popcorn while we watched movies in our little house in Orlando. Almost every time I use this stupid bowl, I think about the fact that this survived most of our courtship, and all of our marriage. Which on one hand is not surprising, because it's a fucking metallic object, made of metal. But memories and nostalgia and shit.

Today was also a little harder because I got off work, with the realization in my brain that today was our former anniversary, and realized it was seven o'clock. So, exactly seventeen years previously, I was hand-in-hand with my dad, veil billowing in a Florida breeze, about to walk down the aisle.

At least that's how my thoughts were running. Possibly, and more likely, my bridesmaids were still churning around in their standard late-1990s-issue empire-waist, aubergine dresses, waiting to precede me. I was still probably hyperventilating.

Memories from my wedding day: I remember that I woke up at six o'clock or so. We were staying at a hotel adjacent to our venue, and I went down to the pool and read about 3/4 of The Deep End of the Ocean, which I had pilfered from a bridesmaid's bag. Because I read fast, it was still early when I got bored. I went up and knocked on the door where my nieces were staying, and my niece Melissa came to hang out with me. We went to a local restaurant and she had breakfast while I began a slow spiral to insanity.

Later Melissa and I went and paid for some trees/plants to decorate my venue.

We checked on my venue. I hyperventilated.

We checked on my centerpieces. I hyperventilated.

We met up with the other maids, and got our hair done. The first version of my hair was a shellacked bouffant that Tricia Nixon might have sported. I hyperventilated. When my recovery from this round was prolonged, Melissa offered the information I had not eaten anything all day. I then ate a bagel with cream cheese, improbably procured from the bar in the same strip mall. Then I made the hairdresser take my hair down a few notches.

My brother drove me and the 'maids from the hairdresser to the venue, in his minivan. On the way, he cheerily remarked, "Wow! All this big hair! I feel like I'm chauffeuring a bunch of Alabama cheerleaders!" I did not hyperventilate, but did hit him with a shoe. 

Very shortly before walking down the aisle, my nieces were practicing some ridiculous slow, swoopy walk to go up the aisle, and I (as the classy bride I apparently was) yelled at them to walk like normal people. Then we walked down the aisle, to Enya. I regret nothing.

Speaking of no regrets, I don't regret or mourn my divorce, but I do sometimes miss the guy I married. However, he doesn't exist anymore -- and to be fair, the girl he married doesn't exist anymore. Few artifacts have survived from the time when that guy and that girl were completely in love and happy. One of them is a cheap metal bowl.

so much depends

The people who live in the trailer down the road from me have, apparently, experienced some sort of incident. A lot of clothes are scattered  over the front yard, and they've been there for days.

Possibly the explanation is very dull, like the clothesline fell down, or someone dropped a laundry basket while bringing stuff home from the laundromat. But why would they leave the clothes outside? And why would a pair of jeans be inside out? My money is on an evening that started with the phrase that has led many a lad and/or lass to ruin: "Let's do some shots!"

However this went down, the clothes are still there. I check on them as I go back and forth. I ponder the meaning of the clothes on the grass. Where did they come from? When will they leave us? They fascinate me, they befuddle me, they inspire me.

They inspire me to rip off William Carlos Williams.

so much depends
upon

a pair of 
Wranglers

with one leg
inside-out

beside the 
tighty-whities.