Hambone and Bean Soup à la Broadcasting Legend™
Me: Give me the recipe for your wonderful bean soup! I want to share it with the world.
Broadcasting Legend™: Recipe? What recipe? You know I don’t cook from recipes.
Me: All right. Just talk me through it. I’ll write it all down.
BL: Well, first I bake a fabulous ham with cherry preserves and mustard and brown sugar glaze…
Me: Not the ham recipe, the soup recipe.
BL: That ham was really good, though. And hambones don’t just materialize out of thin air, you know.
Me: We’ll do the ham next time. The soup?
BL: Oh, all right. The night before I want to make the soup, I put a pound of navy beans to soak, in plain cold water with just a little bit of salt.
Me: (writes)
BL: The next day I drain the beans, rinse then, and put them aside. Then I take that big, meaty hambone and simmer it in a pot of water with secret seasonings.
Me: This is a recipe. You’re suppose to tell us what the seasonings are.
BL: Damn. You’re tough. Okay. Let’s see. A little bit of kosher salt because the ham’s already pretty salty, freshly ground black pepper, a cup of dry sherry, chopped onions. Oh, and my secret secret ingredient, celery powder. The celery flavor really cuts through the richness.
Me: Why not just put real celery in it?
BL: Is this your recipe or mine?
Me: Sorry. Go ahead.
BL: After a few hours I take the hambone out of the broth and shred off the meat. Then I put the meat and the soaked beans into the broth and let it simmer some more.
Me: By this time the house is really smelling good.
BL: Half an hour or so before supper, I taste the broth for seasoning, and add another one of my secret ingredients—a touch of cayenne pepper for heat. Just a little. Then I stir it up with the immersion blender. Breaks up some of the beans and makes it creamy. Not too much—I still want whole beans and chunks of ham.
Me: (writes and drools a little)
BL: Then I put in a couple of handsful of chopped carrots and simmer it all until the carrots are tender. Voilà! Hambone and Bean soup à la Broadcasting Legend™!
Me: (having stopped taking notes and started getting plates, pouring wine, and slicing a nice crusty bâtarde) Let’s eat!
(Note to self: next time, take a picture of the bean soup with the wine and the crusty bread and everything, before it’s all eaten up.)
The Worm Moon
Worm Moon? Who would name a full moon the Worm Moon? And in my birthday month, too.
The reason it’s called the Worm Moon, or so the tale goes, is that in March the ground at last become warm enough to bring earthworms back to the surface, which means robins will return (why didn’t they call it the Robin Moon? Much nicer-sounding) and the earth itself will soon be ready for tilling and planting.
Other names for March’s full moon are Crow Moon, Crust Moon (because the snow would thaw during the day and re-freeze at night, forming an icy crust over the surface, Sap Moon, and Lenten Moon. It’s the last full moon of Winter.
In other news, my revisions are proceeding apace. Both doggies seem to have recovered from their gastroenteritis. It’s (once again) gloomy, rainy, thundery and lightning-y today, but all is not lost—the Broadcasting Legend™ is making bean soup from scratch, with a ham bone and everything. Mmmmmm. Perfect rainy-day food. Tomorrow I’ll post his recipe.
That Wacky Sixteenth Century
A vampire? Supposedly that’s what her sixteenth-century contemporaries thought when they wedged a brick in this poor woman’s mouth to keep her from vamping her fellow plague victims and eventually gaining enough “strength” to rise from the dead and start vamping the living.
What is up with ANSA, though, calling 1576 the “Middle Ages”?
Spring has Officially Sprung
Our jessamina vine (at least that’s what the Broadcasting Legend™ calls it—officially it’s a yellow jessamine or Carolina jessamine) has burst into bloom, and who can look at its tumbling waves of bright yellow flowers without feeling cheerful?
When I was growing up in Illinois we had forsythia to give us sunshine-yellow flowers in the spring. For some reason nobody seems to grow forsythia here in Texas (or lilacs, which I miss), but the jessamina is just as lovely. It has a sachet-like, faintly lavender/rose scent which reminds me of small hard candies I sometimes ate as a child.
What heralds Spring for you?
How Does She Do That?
Cressie is long-legged and lanky and when she stands on her hind legs scoping out the kitchen counters she seems about six feet tall. But she can curl up into the tiniest of balls. Where does she put those long bony legs and enormous (sorry, Cress) paws? One of the mysteries of nature.
Here we see her channeling Veronica Lake as she recovers from the gastroenteritis bug her brother Boo so generously shared with her.
She’s better today. I am now ready for everyone in this house to be NOT-SICK. Thank you.
The Second Duchess
Read the First Chapter
The Second Duchess is available on iBookstore!
