Rainy Saturday Comfort

Today was gray and rainy here, as the remnants of Hurricane Noel (like Coward not Christmas) passed just off the coast. It was a good day for curling up with a good book. Unfortunately I had other things to do - work, getting a tire fixed, buying a lamp - so the only curling up I did was under a fleece blanket while I worked this morning. I did do some reading though about 1/2 hour at the tire store while they remounted the repaired tire, and 2 chapters of Harry Potter (we're still working on book 6) while Amy did dishes and cut apples for sauce.

I hadn't meant to spend as much time out of the house as I did. The plan for the day was for me to finish up work early, get the tire fixed then hunker down for the remainder of the day. But the work took longer than expected and by the time I got to the tire store it was going to be at least 2 hours before they were able to look at my tire. Rather than sit in the tire store I left the tire and came home. This meant that I had to go out again to pick up the tire. Since I was out already I decided to stop to look for a lamp for my bedroom. I didn't find one at the first store and realized I needed to stop at home to check on work (I installed upgrades yesterday and users were testing today.). Amy suggested a stop at the lighting specialty store near our house so once I checked in I headed out again.

I found the perfect light there, and got a great deal to boot. The light was in the clearance section and the price on the tag was 50% of the original price. It also had a tag saying it was 50% off. I was very surprised to discover when I went to pay that the 50% off was 50% off the price on the tag, not the original price, so I got the light at 1/4 of the original price. Quite the find. I'll post a picture when I get the light in place.

Amy and I had stopped at the grocery store last night to procure supplies so we could hunker down for the day. In anticipation of the cold wet day we bought the fixings for a simple tomato soup. One of the places where I occasionally get lunch during the week usually has 3 or 4 soups to choose from. On Thursday the menu board listed tomato florentine soup which I really enjoy. I was very disappointed to discover that the soups in the pots were not the soups listed and there was no tomato florentine. When we were discussing what to get at the grocery store I mentioned that I'd like to look for tomato florentine soup, or something similar. Amy suggested making a simple tomato soup and adding to it. We used to make this soup fairly often but haven't in several years. The ingredients were part of what we brought home last night.

The soup recipe is the Tomato Garlic Soup from the New Recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant cookbook. (Note: the link is to the updated edition, we have the original.) We have modified it slightly. The original calls for tomato juice, we use crushed tomatoes. This makes for a chunkier soup, but it's no less tasty. The other modification in today's soup was the addition of the spinach.

This is a great quick soup. There are only 5 ingredients (6 if you count the spinach) although more spices could be added. The garlic is minced then sauted in olive oil. Paprika is added then the tomatoes. Once everything is warm it gets a splash of red wine. I added the spinach (frozen which I thawed first) toward the end. The soup then simmers for about 10 minutes. It took less than 1/2 hour to make, even taking into account that I burned the garlic the first time around and had to clean the pot and mince more. All in all it was the perfect lunch for a cold, rainy Saturday.